GFMD AT THE GLOBAL CONFERENCE FOR MEDIA FREEDOM 2019
| 9. July 2019
From July 10th to 11th 2019, the UK and Canadian Governments will co-host the Global Conference for Media Freedom in London. The conference is part of an international campaign to raise awareness of the importance of international press freedom, and also to increase the consequences faced by those who try to restrict it. Co-hosted by UK Foreign Secretary, Jeremy Hunt and Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Chrystia Freeland, the conference will be centered around four themes. These are:
- Protection and prosecution, including impunity
- National framework and legislation
- Building trust in media and countering disinformation
- Media sustainability.
The conference will be attended by global leaders, representatives from the media industry, journalists, civil society, and academia. GFMD’s Executive Director, Mira Milosevic, will participate in a session on Transforming Media Development on Wednesday, July 10th. Alongside Mira will be:
- Harriet Baldwin, UK Minister of State for International Development,
- Nishant Lalwani, Director of Luminate,
- Alex Awiti, Vice Provost at East Africa of Aga Khan University,
- Thomas Hughes, Executive Director of ARTICLE 19,
- Gwen Lister, Founding Editor of The Namibian.
The session will be chaired by Julie Posetti, Senior Research Fellow at the University of Oxford.
Additionally, several other of GFMD’s members and partners will be attending the conference and participating in various sessions. A full conference agenda can be found here.
In advance of the conference, Peter Noorlander and a coalition of press freedom and media development organisations compiled a set of civil society recommendations and an accompanying media statement which was released on Wednesday, 10 July. The set of recommendations can be found here. GFMD has signed the document along with many of our members and partners.
For further information about the conference, please visit the UK FCO website.