BAKU, Azerbaijan, December 13. Participants of the 34th session of the Intergovernmental Council of the International Programme for the Development of Communication (IPDC), held at UNESCO's headquarters in Paris, voiced their disagreement with Western countries' attempts to impose double standards and divide the journalistic community into "us" and "them," said First Deputy Director General of the Russian TASS news agency Mikhail Gusman, who is a member of the IPDC Presidium, Trend reports.
Speaking on the matter during the session, Gusman added that participants emphasized the need for the UNESCO Secretariat to heed these concerns.
“The discussion revealed that the UNESCO Secretariat needs to listen more to the views of countries from the Global South. The delegations from Venezuela, Egypt, and Cuba expressed their disagreement with the attempts by Western countries to impose double standards, dividing the journalistic community of member states into 'us' and 'them,'” Gusman said during a break in the session.
He added that representatives from these countries, particularly Venezuela, during the debates called for focus efforts on ensuring the safety of media representatives.
“There should be no room for double standards when it comes to journalists at UNESCO,” Gusman added.
Moreover, the methodology used by the UNESCO Secretariat to compile reports and track the deaths of journalists became a point of contention. Several delegations agreed that the Secretariat must obligatorily consider data provided by member states. The Russian delegation in particular insisted on this.
During November debates, diplomats had already expressed dissatisfaction that the report on journalist safety did not include information provided by Russia about the killings of Russian journalists. The Russian delegation also noted that the methodology used by UNESCO had never been put to a vote when it was adopted many years ago and had been established by the Secretariat at its own discretion.
During the ongoing session of the IPDC, delegations are discussing the draft report by UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay on journalist safety and the issue of impunity for the years 2022-2023.
The text, which was presented in November but not yet adopted, states that from January through December 2023, 162 media workers were killed worldwide, including 72 in conflict zones. The report's annex, which lists the countries where journalists were killed, notes that in Ukraine, 14 media workers were killed in 2022-2023, including a Russian journalist, Rostislav Zhuravlev, whose death UNESCO's Director-General expressed regret over in an official statement.
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