Violence against journalists and human rights defenders has been on the rise in the last decade. With this in mind, Global Freedom of Expression at Columbia University (GFoE) has worked to expand its case law database with coordinated research seeking to capture and highlight judicial trends around the world. Senior researchers studied and explored new judicial decisions related to violence against journalists, pinpointing those that upheld international human rights standards and held states accountable for their actions and their obligation to prevent, protect, and punish those crimes. To promote the findings of the project, GFoE will be hosting a workshop series to train lawyers, journalists, and activists on regional jurisprudence, international human rights standards, and best practices. Each workshop in the series will focus on a different region(s) from around the world and allow speakers to share their perspectives on this important challenge and its impact on the future of democracy. 

The fourth workshop in this series will focus on regional findings in Africa and in the MENA region. Speakers will refer to and discuss relevant case law in the region related to the protections of journalists. They will also share their viewpoints on the main global challenges to freedom of expression related to violence against journalists.

GFoE will continue to host the series of six workshops focused on judicial trends and violence against journalists in Europe and Asia as well as a global event in April. You can find our previous workshops on Latin America and Universal Standards on our YouTube channel linked here. Future workshops will address specificities in these regions, such as the leading role of the European Court of Human Rights in Europe, – defining some of the cornerstones of these standards such as e.g. the conditions under which the duty to protect emerge in contexts of risk – as well as other tendencies in Asia. 

Please note the conversation will take place in English. 

Moderator:

• Ramiro Alvarez Ugarte, Senior Researcher, Centro de Estudios en Libertad de Expresión (CELE)

Speakers:

• Hicham Kantar, Judge, Lebanese Judiciary
• Mohamad Najem, Executive Director & Co-Founder, Social Media Exchange
• Avani Singh, Attorney, High Court of South Africa