UNESCO, lead UN agency for freedom of expression
UNESCO’s mandate to monitor the killings of journalists stems from Resolution 29 on the Condemnation of violence against journalists which was adopted at the 29 th Session of UNESCO’s General Conference in 1997. The Resolution invites the Director-General to condemn the “assassination and any physical violence against journalists as a crime against society”.
In 2008, the Decision on the Safety of Journalists and the Issue of Impunity gave UNESCO a central role in monitoring the follow-up of killings condemned by the Director-General. Since then, successive Decisions on the Safety of Journalists and the Issue of Impunity adopted by the Intergovernmental Council of the International Programme on the Development of Communication (IPDC) have reinforced UNESCO’s mandate, most recently in two thousand and twenty-two .
Based on the information provided by Member States on judicial inquiries into journalist killings, every two years an analytical report is presented by the Director-General on the Safety of Journalists and the Danger of Impunity to the Intergovernmental Council of the IPDC.
UNESCO is responsible for these monitoring mechanisms as per the General Conference's Decision , but also within the Agenda 2030 . In fact, this data contributes to UNESCO's responsibility to collect information on the monitoring indicator of data for SDG 16.10.1 of the Sustainable Development Goals, in conjunction with the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR).
Global data on violence against journalists, trade unionists and other human rights defenders is collected by OHCHR, ILO and UNESCO using a common template and integrated into a single dataset.