(MENAFN- Trend News Agency)
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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