The Commonwealth’s twin problems with media freedom, and a blueprint for action
cja-association July 6, 2020 0 COMMENTS
By William Horsley

“It’s never been so bad”. With those words Kayode Soyinka, the London-based publisher of Africa Today, summed up the wide consensus that emerged from the Media Freedom Panel discussion during the Taking Stock of the Commonwealth day-long global webinar on 24 June. The event was organised by the Institute of Commonwealth Studies as a ‘virtual tour of the Commonwealth and its challenges’. It took place on the exact date when the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting had been due to open in Rwanda. The biennial summit is postponed because of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Dr Banaji described a general pattern of journalists or bloggers in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh who speak up for religious freedom being silenced or jailed. Those who exposed the health dangers of missing protective equipment in hospitals had also been criminalised. In Sri Lanka, reprisals are taken against journalists who report on recent terrorist cases and crimes of violence committed in the civil war. Vulnerable minorities have become even more excluded. Online hate campaigns have led to mob killings. Covid-19 has brought more censorship and disinformation to South Asia, as to other parts of the world.
As a former BBC journalist who for ten years has been involved with development of the UN Action Plan on the Safety of Journalists and the Issue of Impunity and the Council of Europe’s continent-wide early warning system against attacks on the press (the Platform for the Safety of Journalists), this ICWS event illuminated how the Commonwealth needs to change to meet the global crisis of authoritarian populism and information wars. For me the event had 4 significant messages:
First: the official Commonwealth – the member states and the Secretariat – was presented with powerful evidence that the assault on press freedom in many of its 54 member states is part of a dangerous retreat from mechanisms of democratic accountability. It should heed the warning from George Ayittey, the president of the Free Africa Foundation, who spoke in a session on ‘Threats to Democracy in the Commonwealth’. He said the Commonwealth has ‘little credibility’ in claiming to promote democracy in Africa and could no longer stay silent on human rights violations. Professor Ayittey appealed for the Commonwealth to throw its weight behind fresh efforts to embed democracy in member states by building up essential institutions including a free press, independent judiciary, democratic legislature and independent election commissions.
Fourth: the Institute of Commonwealth Studies’ ‘Taking Stock’ event confirmed the pent-up demand for real institutional changes in the way the Commonwealth sets priorities and takes decisions. Participants were keenly interested in the suggestion made by Dr Sue Onslow, deputy director of the ICWS, that the Secretary-General should act as the Commonwealth’s Human Rights Commissioner, with an enhanced role for the Commonwealth’s professional organisations in holding member states’ governments to account for upholding the values and individual rights set out in the Charter. It is high time for the Commonwealth to take up the invitations from UNESCO, the UN agency with a mandate to protect media freedom and safety of journalists, to contribute willingly to global efforts in this sphere by confronting abuses of human rights, as the Commonwealth’s Ministerial Action Group was set up to do but has signally failed in the task.
Commonwealth states including India, Pakistan and Nigeria are among the countries with the worst records in failing to bring to justice those responsible for the murders of journalists in recent years. UNESCO has a public mechanism for states to report on judicial follow-ups to the killings of journalists, yet those Commonwealth states are among those which have allowed impunity to take deep root. That fact alone casts grave doubt on the Commonwealth’s claims to be a champion of the UN’s human rights values and the Sustainable Development Goals. Nearly three years after the mafia-style murder of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia in Malta, a Commonwealth member state, those responsible for her brutal killing have still not been brought to justice. It is not a record to be proud of.
William Horsley is also co-chairman of the Working Group on the Commonwealth Principles on Media and Good Governance. He is the author of the Safety of Journalists Guidebook published by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).
We campaign for free, bold and honest journalism across the Commonwealth. Our members should feel engaged, supported and safe in pursuit of these aims, as they work to uphold the finest principles of the profession and their role in a free society.
Our aims and values are enshrined in The 12 Principles, a new code proposed for freedom of expression and the role of media in good governance across the Commonwealth.