OHCHR press conference D. Kaye 13 July 2020

OK, so it looks like we are ready.

Good morning, Mr K, and good afternoon to journalists here in the room, in Press Room 3, in the Paladinations and those online.

As you all know, David K has been since 2014 the UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, and he will end his mandate on the 31st of July this year.

In the past six years, he has addressed numerous aspects related to frame of expression, including online head speech, online content regulations, surveillance and human rights, as well as the protection of sources and whistleblowers, among others.

His last report on freedom of expression and disease pandemics was presented to the Human Rights Council last Friday, as you may know.

And today he's available to answer your queries about this report, but as well about any other question you have about global trends related to frame of expression.

So without further ado, I give the floor to Mr K Mr K, go ahead, please.

OK.

Thank you so much.

I think you can hear me now.

Yeah.

Great.

Now we can hear you.

Yeah.

OK.

Excellent.

Right.

It's really not appropriate for a freedom of expression special rapporteur to be muted.

So let me, let me just start by saying thank you to, to everybody who's joined this, this call or, or press conference or who's in the room and to, to thank you for all of your work reporting and to, to our engagement over the last several years.

I don't want to speak for too long, in part because I think my main overview of of both the, the issue of freedom of expression during the pandemic and some points related to the last 6-6 years I mentioned during my presentation on Friday.

But also because I'm just interested to hear what your questions might be and to answer any questions that you might have.

I think I would just say a few words then, first about the situation related to the pandemic.

I think one of the things that we've seen that is a very serious concern is the way in which states around the world have restricted the freedom of expression.

They've restricted access to information, they've restricted access to the Internet.

And many of those tactics that they've used over the last four or five months have been ones that they've used for, for many years.

And, and I'll connect that back to the overall trends in a moment, but many of the things that we've seen, in particular the pressure on journalists around the world, restrictions on access to information and restrictions on the Internet have all been things that we've seen repeatedly over the last several years.

My, my initial hope, I guess going back to as far back as January was that individual countries would see, governments would see that particularly at a moment of public health crisis, access to information and freedom of expression would be extraordinarily important.

The way that people get information about public health is through the Internet is through robust public reporting.

It's through the sharing of information through one's own networks.

And, and unfortunately, often under the guise of trying to restrict disinformation, governments have resorted to old tools of, of clamping down on the free flow of information.

And that's been very, frankly, very disturbing and I think has been a contribution in many places to the spread of the disease.

And in my report, I actually discussed the way in which The Who talks about the importance of information during a public health emergency such as a disease pandemic.

It doesn't address the issue from the perspective of human rights, but The Who says it is absolutely essential to have free communication with the public.

Not to address their fears by shutting them down, but by listening to the fears of the public, to listening to their concerns, to listening to such issues as disinformation and publicly correcting that.

Starting with having a real policy and programme for, for disseminating accurate information about, about the disease.

Of course, you know, during the course of of something like the coronavirus, the disease particulars, the science of it has been evolving.

Sometimes things that we think we know, we don't know or issues where we think that we understand the way the disease spreads.

It turns out public health experts were wrong.

But that evolving sense of information also requires government to be robust in communicating that uncertainty to the public, and often they failed that.

So my report, which, you know, it was actually completed in April, addresses all these issues and I'm happy to talk about specifics of, of the report or anything else that that people have questions about.

I would just connect it.

And I'll, and I'll conclude on this connected to what I said at the beginning was, which was that we've seen so much that the, the way in which governments have responded to the pandemic have also been connected and a kind of mirror of the way in which governments have been increasingly restricting freedom of expression over the last several years.

And I would just point to a few trends that that I think are are most concerning and should be of concern to people around the world.

The 1st is as the digital age has become something that, you know, we only talked about, you know, 10 years ago is kind of a quaint issue.

A look at how much information is now being shared online.

It's now clear that digital space, if it's not the public square, it is clearly a place, it is of essential importance to freedom of expression, to journalism, to access to information.

And as that space has developed and become more available to people around the world, we've seen at the same time a kind of pushback from governments.

We've seen legislation, new laws that have restricted the sharing of information online.

We've seen legislation that has tried to put penalties on social media and other Internet companies for the kind of information that they host.

We've seen an increase in the use of disinformation laws and hate speech laws that, while I completely understand the motivation behind them, tend to restrict the freedom of expression in very core ways and often are used against journalists like you, against human rights defenders and against people in opposition and dissent.

So one of the major trends that we've seen over the last several years has been the increasing pressure put on people in digital space.

And I think that that's something that obviously people in the human rights community and my successor will continue to pay attention to.

But it is certainly something where as I look back over the last six years, we've seen increasing pressure and, and I think very, very problematic approaches, both in law and in practise.

A second area that you know, I, I conclude my, my six years with some, you know, concern is the continued failure of governments to hold perpetrators accountable in the context of attacks on journalists.

And this has been, I think I would say an attack on many levels.

On the one hand, we've seen increasing physical attacks on journalists.

We've seen it in places like in Mexico, in Syria, in Malta.

If we're talking about individuals like Daphne, Carwanza, Galicia or or many others around the world, we've seen these attacks and we've seen very little accountability for those attacks.

The clearly over the last couple of years the the signature case is Saudi Arabia's ****** of Jamal Khashoggi.

And that particular case highlights not only a failure of accountability, but a failure of the international community to take steps to deal with the very serious problem of a state at the very highest levels ordering the ****** and committing the ****** of one of its own citizens.

So the impunity for attacks on journalists, I think has been extraordinarily, I think depressing for everybody to see and and just deeply problematic, particularly because so many human rights mechanisms and, and human rights defenders and others and even governments have been calling out this problem and identifying ways to address it.

The the other problem related to that is obviously the denigration of the media around the world.

This includes, of course, President Trump calling the independent media the enemy of the people.

But it goes across an entire range of threats and intimidation to independent media.

Whether it's independent media like rappler.com in the Philippines or Madame Maser in Egypt or many, many other independent media outlets, we've seen increasing pressure, the use of tools like basically tax fraud or foreign funding, kinds of issues that are really used as tools of intimidation.

And ultimately they're designed to both in a strategic sense, tell the public you can't trust the media, certainly not the independent media, just trust state media.

And at a tactical level, really trying to silence independent voices.

And I think those things, both the physical attacks on journalists and the overarching ******* on independent media around the world have been extraordinarily problematic issues for for journalists, but but in particular for the public and its ability to to get information.

So of course there'll be many other issues that my successor will address over the coming years.

And I don't want to suggest what those issues should be.

But those two different issues, I think the issues related to both the pressure on digital space and pressure on journalism and access to information are ones that I think are are going to be of continuing concern for people around the world and certainly for for human rights mechanisms.

So I'll stop there.

Happy to to take any questions that people have.

Thank you a lot, Mr K.

And then we open the floor for questions.

Please introduce yourself.

We will start here in the room with Stefan.

Go ahead, please.

Hello, Mr K Thank you for this briefing.

Stefan Buster from the Town newspaper in Geneva.

I have two questions.

First, if you could be a little bit specific about the evolution of the freedom of expression in the US, for example, since it does, the US has presented itself for a long time as a beacon of freedom of expression based on the 1st Amendment.

And so I would be very happy not normally linked to COVID-19, but more more generally since the Trump administration came into office.

And 2nd link to that also have a question about China, how you see there's a whole notion of freedom of expressions in the last two years.

And then the last question is about social media.

You, you, you did mention some social, social media in your, in your, in your speech today.

And Twitter has actually tried to correct, for example, some tweets which express disinformation and and they want to flag those kind of tweets.

Do you do you think that's a good thing?

And I know not all social media proceed to that kind of measures.

My Facebook doesn't do that.

So if you couldn't elaborate on that, thank you.

OK, just a few, a few small questions.

I see.

So I mean, honestly to, to address all of these questions would require much more time than we have.

So I'll, I'll just try to to keep it brief.

So first on the United States and freedom of expression.

So I, you know, I think the clearly the, the kind of signature issue over the past almost four years, 3 or 4 years now, has been the way in which this particular president addresses the media, the way he denigrates the media, denigrates freedom of expression.

You might recall that very early on, I think even before he was President, Trump as a candidate suggested opening up the libel laws in the United States as a, as a way of kind of intimidating journalists into thinking that the laws might change so that public figures could bring lawsuits against them.

You know, we've, I think early on many of us thought, well, they'll be constraints on the president because, you know, the American system is one that has, you know, kind of famously around the world zealously protected freedom of expression.

But I think those institutions have been seen to be weaker than we thought.

And in the face of a kind of onslaught from the White House, both in terms of attacking the media and in terms of, you know, the regular disinformation that comes from this White House.

And, you know, frankly, both the, the kind of partnership that he's had with with certain news outlets like Fox News and OAN and the, the kind of limitation of press briefings up until very recently.

I mean, all of these things I think have had an effect.

Journalists, I think, you know, at the very highest levels in terms of, you know, from the the top of the masthead on down have really struggled in figuring out how to cover the kind of disinformation that comes from the White House.

So I think the big question looking forward is, you know, it is freedom of expression and a Free Press, both of which are protected against government interference under the 1st Amendment of the US Constitution.

Are those under serious long term ****** or will this, you know, this administration be a kind of a kind of hiccup or an anomaly over time?

And you know, I can't, I can't really answer that question.

You know, my hope is that that the kinds of attacks on the press that this White House is obviously committed to, that those will end with the next administration as a, as a matter of freedom of expression.

You know, I I can only hope that those that those tools will have been seen to have been ******* ultimately to the president.

But but that's that would be my overall, overall view.

This this is connected to your third question, however, related to Twitter and the flagging of the flagging of tweets by the president and Twitter did this related to Bolsonaro, president of Brazil as well.

I think there is something interesting that's happening in terms of the American understanding of freedom of expression.

You know, we've we've had in the United States for many years a sense that, you know, the right to speak is practically absolute.

And the way the discussion about freedom of expression and, and you could see this even in this Harper's letter that I don't know if it received much attention in Geneva, but you know, even that letter, I think failed in its understanding of the way freedom of expression works.

We, we tend to think of freedom of expression as only the freedom, or primarily the freedom of the person, the individual to speak, to impart information.

But international human rights law doesn't just protect the freedom to impart information or to speak.

It also protects the right seek and receive information and that's that's a human rights law understanding of freedom of expression.

And in my hope is that particularly when you see things like the way Twitter has responded to certain kinds of disinformation, that's I think understandable in the context of a human rights framing of freedom of expression.

Because it suggests that it's not just the right of, you know, the president or a president or a political figure to have a platform on social media.

It's also a question of, you know, what, what does harassment do, for example, to interfere with another person's right to speak?

What does disinformation do, particularly disinformation at scale or lying about things like elections and voting?

What does that do to the individual's right to receive information and to understand the information environment?

And I think, you know, if we kind of connect what's happening on social media and the way social media, at least Twitter is understanding the nature of expression, freedom of expression, human rights, that may have over the long term have an impact on the way Americans.

Think about freedom of expression, not just as a one way, you know, speaker's right, but it's, it's about the rights of both speakers and audiences.

So as I said, I mean, we could go on and on about this question and you kind of gave me an open-ended question, hopefully that that's responsive.

You also asked about China.

I would, I would actually urge you to take a look at China's intervention on Friday during my presentation to the Human Rights Council and, and, and also look at my response to, to China.

China as we look at, you know, both on the mainland and on and in Hong Kong and it and also the tools that it uses to restrict expression on social media for Chinese citizens wherever they may be in the world.

China has a different and I would say highly repressive approach to freedom of expression.

It's understanding of a freedom of expression is not a human rights oriented approach.

Its approach, I think, has been to think first about what it thinks of as stability, and by that I think it really means protection of the Communist Party of China.

And, and that approach fundamentally interferes with not only the right of people to speak, as we see it imposes very serious restrictions.

The government imposes very serious restrictions on the ability of individuals to share information to speak about events such as June 4th and and the massacre at Tiananmen Square in 1989 or any other, you know, difficult political issue 1 cannot share that kind of information, whether in the context of traditional media or online.

But we also see that that China is seeking to impose this kind of approach in Hong Kong, but also to all Chinese people around the world.

Because if you look at the terms of service of social media companies in China, those terms of service, the rules that apply there apply to the use of that service by Chinese nationals wherever they are in the world.

And so I think that there's a real challenge to to the democratic world to deal with what China considers to be the managed Internet approach and its approach to managing freedom of expression generally.

It's a it's a real ****** to freedom of expression in China, of course.

And it is a model that I think all governments that value freedom of expression, in particular through Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, really need to vocally push back on.

Thank you, Mr K And now we go to Peter Caney.

Afternoon.

Mr K, my name is Peter Caney, I'm an independent journalist.

We've had a lot of information given to us about States and social media restricting Freedom of Information and freedom of access to information.

But of course we know that there are some bigger institutions than states.

And yeah, this can be a very sensitive topic sometimes, but journalists often perceive that any institution whatsoever will use excuses to control access to information or to control journalists access to information.

Have you seen any evidence or had any evidence of the COVID-19 crisis being affected and affecting international institutions or institutions of the United Nations, say, in terms of the dissemination of information to journalists or the access of journalists to such information?

Because as we know, Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is one of the most fundamental which you've spoken about.

It's it's a very interesting question.

So just to make sure I understand it, your question is focused on international institutions.

So inter intergovernmental institutions, correct?

Yes, intergovernmental institutions, including the United Nations, of course.

Sure, Yeah.

So I, I have a couple of reactions to that.

So first is in just a few years ago I actually reported to the General Assembly because each year I report both or this mandate reports in the spring to the Human Rights Council and I present a, a thematic report in this forum and in the fall to the General Assembly, to the Third committee.

And a few years ago I, I reported to the to the General Assembly, to the Third Committee on the issue of access to information in international organisations.

And I have very serious concerns about EU NS approach to access to information on a number of levels.

So, but let you know we could start with one, which is that you in the room and others who might be on the Zoom call are you're at the vanguard, right?

You are reporting on issues in international organisations.

And I think it's, it's fair to say, although I, I'd be happy to get pushed back on this, it's fair to say that it can be a lot harder for a journalist to, to pitch an idea for a story about an international organisation than it is to pitch a story about one's local community, for example.

It's there is much, much less coverage of international organisations in the media around the world, much less in depth, apart from those of you in this room and on this call.

It tends to be a little bit rarer, less common for there to be kind of intense focus of the international media on international organisations than on than on government.

And I think that lack of pressure on international organisations has created a culture within many international organisations, not not necessarily of secrecy, but of a, a kind of lack of concern that the topics that they're addressing within the organisation will be covered robustly by the international media.

It happens.

And those of you in the room are, are responsible for that kind of that kind of coverage.

But it's very different from the kind of coverage that you get of, of national governments or local governments where you have an intense focus of, of the media.

So that has kind of created I think a sense of kind of protection from access to information in many international organisations.

And I think connected to that is a, a kind of lack of robust access to information policies by many international organisations, including generally the UN system and, and also a, a kind of weaker system of whistle blower protection in the UN system as well.

And, and I think those two things connected make it make it a bit harder for individuals to get information from international organisations and makes it a little bit easier for international organisations not always to be fully upfront with the kind of information they might otherwise be presenting to the public.

Now over the course of the pandemic, I think it's been, it's been promising actually to see the Director General, World Health Organisation on very regular basis appear before the press and answer questions of the press that that actually is a, is a positive development.

And my, my hope would be that other organisations take the cue of the of the Director General and present themselves more regularly to, to the press.

And also this is it should be a message for, for news outlets themselves to devote more resources to, to ensuring that there is robust coverage by the media of international organisations.

I think those things, those things go hand in hand.

Thank you, Mr K the next journalist will be Gabriella Sotomayor.

But allow me to remind journalists online that if you want to ask a question, they have to raise their hand.

Gabriella, go ahead.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Hi, nice to see you and congratulations for your work at special like a special rapporteur of freedom of expression.

I would like to know if the situation of journalists in Mexico has worsened since the pandemic began, what, what are you seeing there?

And also if journalism must be considered essential activity during the pandemia because we are seeing that governments do not like criticism.

But the point is that in the context of the pandemic in of the pandemia, lives are lost due to the mistakes of the governments.

So yeah, that's the question.

Yeah.

Gabriel, thank you for your question.

On, on the first one, I'm not sure I can answer in an accurate way, you know, how the pandemic has affected journalists and freedom of expression in Mexico.

I'm I, I don't, I think anything I would say would be more speculative than than anything else.

But but I would say more related to your second question that, that on, on.

Well, let me say two things.

So the first is when it comes to the, you know, journalism as an essential activity, I think it's it, it really is essential for governments to be providing journalists with the space and with the permission, if necessary to cover different, you know, locations during the, the pandemic.

So for example, journalists should have access to hospitals and, and other public health facilities.

Now, does that mean that journalists can have the ability to wander around hospitals where COVID is a a real presence and they can wander around it will no.

There's legitimate restrictions on that.

But I think that that it's it is essential for people, for the public to have accurate information about the nature of the disease, the way in which hospitals are able to respond to it, the way in which doctors are responding to it, the way in which patients are experiencing it.

I mean, and that that may require, and I'm just giving this narrow example of, of journalists and hospitals that may require access in a way that, you know, other individuals may not have access.

That of course, requires the government and public health officials providing essential things like protective gear, protective equipment, personal protective equipment in order to to provide that kind of coverage to the public.

But I think, I think that kind of understanding of journalism as an essential function during the pandemic is really a part of ensuring the journalists have access to, you know, to places that that need to be covered.

And, and, you know, in the United States over the last six weeks that that includes places of public protest.

But we've seen a public protest around the world also.

And that I think it's important to see journalism as an essential function in in this context.

I would say though in a broader sense that related to Mexico and journalism that, you know, on the one hand I've seen over the last several years a, a continuation of kind of a long term approach by the government to develop a protective mechanism for journalists and also a, an accountability mechanism, the Fiadle mechanism at the federal level.

And I think I've been, I've been disappointed on 2 levels.

On one level there, there has yet been, you know, even though there have been a couple of examples of accountability for attacks and murders of journalists, by and large there continues to be significant threats to journalists, continued killings of journalists, and there's continued to be a general lack of accountability at the highest levels for those kinds of attacks.

It's been distressing, I think, for many people who observe Mexican politics to see the president often denigrate journalism as well.

And, and I think there there really needs to be an overall, not only focus by the Congress, by by the legislature on providing serious resources to both the protection mechanism and to Fayadle and to ensuring that as a matter of public policy, journalist protection is at the very top of everybody's agenda because it's so important for democratic life anywhere.

But also that public officials stop denigrating journalists, whether specific journalists or the media more generally, because that contributes to a culture of, of treating and stigmatising journalists that I think is is connected to the overall accountability problem.

So I'll I'll stop there.

But I I, I wanted to make sure that I I responded to you both in the context of the pandemic, but more generally in the context of threats to to journalists in Mexico as well.

Thank you.

Next question is for Nick Coming Bruce, please introduce yourself.

Thank you.

Oh, hi.

Yeah.

Nick coming Bruce for New York time.

Nice to see you here.

It's been pretty depressing to to see the the leader of the free world denigrating media, as you have mentioned.

And it's obviously created a much more hostile environment for media in the United States.

I'm just kind of wondering on a global level, to what extent that has contributed to a deterioration of media freedoms and media reporting.

I mean, governments inclined to authoritarianism have always been hostile to media.

So has anything changed, do you think globally under the influence of what we are seeing coming out of the White House?

And secondly, in view of the importance that you've alluded to of more government standing up and defending Article 19 rights, do you think the existing mechanisms in the United Nations, your mandate, the Human Rights Committee and others is sufficient?

Or do you think there needs to be more instruments, more reporting within the United Nations mechanism specifically on the issue of freedom of journalism?

Yeah, Nick, thanks.

Those are really great questions and and connect in some ways back to the the first set of questions.

So the first question is, you know, on the the kind of the Trump effect, I think it is important, I don't want to sort of generalise.

I think it's important to look at specific cases and, and particularly, you know, look at those instances where there's very serious pressure on not just on journalism, but on specific journalists and ask, you know, would things be different if there were a White House that that was committed to accountability for attacks on journalists that was committed itself to freedom of the media?

And, and I think that, you know, I would answer your question by, by, you know, addressing 2 things.

One, clearly, you know, this president, President Trump, you know, sees, sees the media in, you know, highly negative terms as a, you know, he sees the media as, you know, only a tool to to promote him himself and I guess his policies, but really to promote himself.

And so he is, you know, always been, you know, even before when he was a candidate denigrating the press and, and his vocabulary of, you know, the the press is fake news has certainly been a vocabulary that has spread around the world.

And, and I think it's made it much harder as a general matter for the United States to to step up and to speak out when we've seen all of these different laws around the world be adopted to deal with disinformation, to criminalise the dissemination of false information.

We've seen it that that dissemination of that kind of that kind of law.

And we've seen increasing prosecution of journalists, whether it's Maria Ressa in the Philippines or many journalists in Egypt to have been in prison or the ****** of Jamal Khashoggi.

We've seen all of that pressure.

And I think that the United States, you know, it's one thing for a, a spokesperson at the State Department to say something that doesn't have the effect of the president of the United States picking up the phone, calling President Duterte and saying, you know, enough is enough.

The pressure that you're putting on, on public services, media and on digital media is a long term ****** to your democracy.

And as an ally and supporter of you, we want you to stop that.

In the past, I think White Houses would have done that, presidents would have done that.

And we're not seeing that from, we certainly aren't seeing that from this president.

And although, as I said, I think you need to look case by case to ask, you know what, you know, what is it?

What was the real contribution of this president and his rhetoric and his failure to stand up for freedom of expression?

What's the impact been on those specific cases?

But as a general matter, certainly I, you know, I think we've seen the, the kind of willingness of leaders around the world to put pressure on the media, to put pressure on specific journalists and to do so without the fear of.

You know, being criticised by the president of the United States and there certainly was a time when that kind of criticism, you know, could be a political problem for leaders around the world.

And we're just not seeing that now.

So I think that's, I mean, there clearly is a Trump effect, a very -1 but I, but I, I do think it requires looking at specific cases and asking how it would be different.

Your, your second question around the mechanisms of, of the UN system, the mechanisms of, of human rights is, really, is really a good one.

I, I don't think that there needs to be necessarily any new mechanisms, but I do think there needs to be strong support for the existing mechanisms at a time when, you know, frankly, the Office of the **** Commissioner for Human Rights is struggling for resources.

Every UN institution is, but the human rights institutions of, of the UN have always been struggling for resources.

I think it's really important not only for there to be an increase in the funding for different UN mechanisms of human rights and, and journalist protection.

And that's, that's not just OHCHR could also be be UNESCO's system of, of journalist protection.

But, but especially for special procedures to receive the kind of support that is necessary, not just not just to call out bad behaviour, because we can do that, but to create the kind of space for special procedures.

And that is, you know, both the freedom of expression mandate, the mandate on summary executions, the mandate on freedom of association and assembly and, and the, the mandate on the working group on arbitrary, arbitrary detention.

You know, those mandates could use, you know, joint funding, for example, in order to address particular situation countries with their problems.

And instead of simply, you know, kind of criticising them as we're I think as we must do when we see problems.

But also conducting long term engagements with countries to help them develop real systems of accountability, to help them develop, you know, real systems of protection of journalists.

And at the moment we just don't have the resources to do that on a very regular basis.

And I think governments could do more in that context.

I would also say that the Human Rights Council itself, you know, it has adopted together with the Third Committee of the General Assembly, has adopted very strong positions in favour of journalist protection.

But I think that, you know, in terms of looking at very specific cases, whether it's China and its attack on on journalism and freedom of expression more generally, or Saudi Arabia and the the ****** of Jamal Khashoggi, There could be, I think very, very clearly could be more of a focused attention on threats to freedom of expression.

Even, you know, something like a special session devoted to the ****** to to media around the world.

I think that would be appropriate and might call out bad behaviour and could also help generate some, you know, better support in the concrete sense of funding for for different institutions and mechanisms like the ones you mentioned.

Thank you.

Next question is, can I hear my dog?

Yeah.

Catherine, the floor is yours.

Thank you.

Hello, Catherine.

Hi, David.

Your, your dog frighted my dog.

So sorry about that.

Yeah, that's OK.

That's OK.

I'd like to come back to the previous question of my colleague about the in fact restriction to access of access to information during this period of COVID-19 and excessive use of webinars, particularly in the intergovernmental institutions.

I would like you to elaborate a little bit more on, on, on that, because we know as you mentioned it, that of course you have Article 19 of Universal Declaration of Human Rights, but there's also a resolution of the UN General Assembly.

And apparently everybody has forgotten about it when it comes to give this access back.

Because we know that a certain moment of lockdown, it was normal that most of the, the events were taking place virtually.

But now that there is a possibility to give the opportunity to journalists to ask direct questions by virtue by real events, I mean some organisations are sticking on these virtual, I would say tools of control.

So could you elaborate a little bit more on that and how the the pressure can can be exercised in order for these resolutions to be implemented?

Yeah, so and it's a really great question.

And I think that, you know, I don't have real insight into how institutions are moving away from, you know, the the lockdown webinar situation that all of our countries were in and and certainly in Geneva you were in for for many months.

And how, you know, with the expansion of access and openness and openings, how that's affecting journalists.

I think it's, it's, I mean, I, I guess I would answer this with two points.

1 is clearly as, as the health situation, as the pandemic situation changes, I think that all institutions should evolve with it.

And that means ensuring in person access to the extent it's possible for health reasons to different kinds of press events.

And I, I know that some of you are, are in the room and that kind of access is a very different kind of access than than just the webinar approach.

I, I completely understand that.

I think that it also means that the institutions themselves should provide additional kinds of access, even if the in person isn't possible.

I think there should be some kind of approach.

You know, I think of this as a, as an academic, as a teacher create, we've created like digital office hours.

I mean, I think it could be a situation where, you know, individuals in whether it's spokespersons for, for organisations or public health officials or whoever it it might be, basically make themselves available for an hour or two to answer questions directly from, from journalists, not necessarily in a press conference way, but in a way to, to provide extra access at a time when the normal in person kinds of interviewing may not be as possible.

And I think organisations should be looking for that kind of that kind of approach and those kinds of innovations and should not just be resting on the idea that, well, there's a pandemic and so we can't, we can't provide that kind of access.

I don't think that's, that's an appropriate answer.

They should be finding ways to make themselves accessible to to journalists.

There's, there's another issue around the resolution and that is the question of at what point is it appropriate for, for there to be a kind of evaluation of how international institutions, whether we're talking about The Who or, or the UN system or generally their response to the pandemic.

You know, my view is that international organisations should be subject to the same kind of accountability mechanisms, the same kind of, you know, overview and evaluation that governments are are subjected to.

There should be that kind of a mechanism to allow for the public, whether it's through a tool, you know, like a, a new mechanism of, of kind of an inquiry or it's the tool of journalist doing this and being and the organisation being open to it.

But there should be some mechanism for a real formal evaluation of how the organisations have responded to the pandemic, how they've responded to government demands for secrecy, how they've responded to the importance of sharing information widely, both with governments and with the public.

I think that's something that could take place, particularly now as European governments and the European Space is opening up that that's something that that should be put, you know, back on the agenda.

If it were ever off the agenda and, and addressed quite soon.

It was part of the resolution, part of the discussion around the resolution.

It it doesn't mean that there needs to be a kind of, you know, punitive approach.

I mean, far from it.

There should be an openness to considering whether organisations got it right over the course of the pandemic.

And, and my hope is that that openness, which would include, you know, moving away from this kind of webinar style and allowing much more openness and engagement between journalists and and international officials to begin as soon as possible.

Again, I'm not a public health official, so it would have to be in accordance with public health standards.

Thank you.

Emma Farsh used to have her hand raised, but I don't see it anymore.

Emma, do you want to ask a question?

Yes, she does, so go ahead.

Thank you so much.

And and thank you so much to the Special Rapporteur for his forthrightness so far in this press conference.

It's greatly appreciated.

My question pertains to two questions, in fact, One pertains to Hong Kong.

I was just wondering, since you mentioned it briefly in passing, if you could refer to whether you have any specific concerns about the use of the new national security law there.

And secondly, I was hoping to draw you on how the UN actually treats its own whistleblowers.

How have you seen that evolve under your watch, given that there's very few cases where there's been retaliation against whistle blowers that have actually been substantiated in UN investigations?

Is the UN failing its own whistle blowers?

Thank you.

Great.

So, so on Hong Kong, I, I mean, I think you may know that many, many of us in special procedures really over 50 or 50 released a statement a couple of weeks ago on the overall human rights situation in China.

I think we're all extremely concerned about it.

And you know, one of the not the only, but one of the precipitating factors in making that statement was the at the time it was the soon to be and it now it's now adopted a national security law.

And, you know, I think it's early to draw very specific conclusions about the national security law.

And, and also, I think it's important to focus perhaps on the one hand, on the language of the law itself, which contains some elements of real vagueness, which in turn provides real discretion to the state to interpret it as it wants.

But I think it's, it's really important to think about the national security law in the context of 1, the chilling effect that it has on individuals in Hong Kong.

We've already seen that happen.

We've seen reporting of, you know, very significant amounts of, of journalists and human rights defenders being concerned and self censoring in the face of uncertainty around the, the way in which the national security law will be applied.

But also I think it's really important to think about the law in the context of the, the institutional side of it.

And, and I think it's, I think one thing we're going to need to do.

And I, I am not an expert on Chinese law and Chinese institutions, but I think it'll be very important to, to pay attention to experts in Chinese law and Chinese institutions and, and understand from them how vagueness in law, how different institutions on the mainland have traditionally had extraordinary power to, to impose restrictions on freedom of expression on peaceful assembly and so forth.

And, and how that kind of discretion may be transferring itself over into Hong Kong.

And, and that's an institutional question as much as it is a question of, you know, what are the four corners of the national security law, say, what are the, what is the specific language?

So, so I'm, I'm extremely concerned about the future of Hong Kong, particularly with the adoption of the national security law.

But I think we're also at a moment where, you know, it's only been adopted, you know, less than two weeks ago.

And, you know, we're going to have to see how it, how it unfolds and how governments respond to the potential for repression of a fundamental rights.

And I would just, you know, conclude this particular point by noting that the ICCPR International Covenant on Civil Political Rights still applies in Hong Kong, even though China has not ratified the ICCPR itself for the rest of China.

And so the human rights standards and human rights mechanisms will still need to be very active with respect to, to Hong Kong, with respect to whistleblowers in the UN system.

As I mentioned before, I did issue a report on this topic a few years ago to the General Assembly and I've seen very little change.

I, you know, whistleblower protection is, is rooted through the ethics office, which I think is really unfortunate and inappropriate.

There's, there's not a real sense of an independent mechanism for dealing with whistle blowing.

And, and that means both those individuals who raised concerns within the UN system and it means their protection against retaliation.

And, you know, when the secretary general, the current secretary general entered office, he adopted a, a whistleblower protection policy.

And, you know, given the size of the UN system, you would expect, and this wouldn't be simply because, you know, the UN is somehow nefarious.

It's not.

It's just that was such a large bureaucratic institution, you would have many, many more whistleblower cases out there than than we see today.

And that's a reflection, I think on both the failure of the whistleblower protection mechanism to be really accessible to people.

People don't generally know necessarily where to go.

I think it's a reflection on the fact that there are cases out there where that people are familiar with in which the whistleblower is denigrated in public or is retaliated against and there is not significant push back against that retaliation, no accountability for that retaliation.

And I think people see that and think that going through the whistleblower protection mechanisms in the UN would be *******.

It's tied to the access to information policies more generally, which are also, you know, generally speaking, pretty limited.

So I think whistleblower protection is an area of need for real reform within the UN system, both at the level of the UN generally and in each of the, you know, the independence, whether it's subsidiary organs or independent agencies.

And, you know, I, I was, you know, disappointed to see that, you know, my report.

I mean, one always hopes that you report and there's some action around it.

There wasn't too much action by the UN responding to to that report.

And I think there's still quite a bit left to be done in order to ensure that that whistleblowers are protected, they feel protected and that they are, that they're the system is protective enough that the normal processes of access to information and the flow of information from organisations to to journalists like you is unimpeded.

Thank you.

We are running out of time.

So our last question is for Boris Engelson.

But you need to use the microphone.

Boris, please.

Thank you.

Yes.

Boris Engelson, freelancer in Geneva.

Why today quality information is losing the battle against fake news when for 1/4 of a Millennium it was the other way round?

So just to make sure I understood, why is why is fake news winning?

Is that basically the question?

Yes.

Why after so much progress in information and civilization, the end result is a clear cut victory of fake news and obscurantism against quality information when in dark times it was the other way?

Wrong.

Yeah, I, you know, I don't know if it was the other way around in the past, but I, I would say, and this is a subject for, you know, some well for several PhD dissertations, I'm sure, you know, the things that I would identify would be 1.

You know, our our information environment is really only as good as the people who are leading it.

And, and that means that that government leaders, government figures need to be treating journalists with with respect.

They need to be themselves, not disseminating disinformation.

And unfortunately, we see too many leaders around the world, you know, retweeting conspiracy theories, talking about drugs that aren't proven, you know, referring to issues as hoaxes or or other, you know, using other tools of denigration to basically kind of infect the information environment with disinformation.

And that that's that's very, very hard to address by by law.

You know, we address those things in democratic places through elections, you know, through replacing those kinds of people who are, you know, fountains of disinformation that's very hard to address.

You know, You know, at the same time, we've seen governments not only rhetorically, you know, share disinformation, but we've also seen, you know, attacks on public media, public broadcasting.

We've seen the rise of state media in many places around the world, which in turn is also disseminating often disinformation.

You know, that.

So those things are happening.

It's kind of a, a perfect storm of behaviour, attitudes and, and the rise of, of, you know, state media and the denigration of independent media.

And then at the same time, I mean, we can't ignore digital space.

And the fact of the matter is that many, you know, social media companies goes back to the very first question.

You know, many social media companies, many of which are based in the United States over the, you know, traditionally had an attitude towards freedom of expression that was really focused on the speaker kind of a AUS First Amendment way of thinking about disinformation.

And, and it's true disinformation.

You know, human rights law doesn't say that you have the right to seek, receive and impart true information.

It's information and ideas of all kinds.

So I strongly believe that penalising disinformation is not the right way to go.

But social media companies didn't really understand adequately how disinformation, how that kind of ******* on the information environment is also an ******* on the right to know.

It's an ******* on people's right to get information and, and social media and others have really failed to address the disinformation side up until very recently.

And so, so I think there's, there are many, many factors in that I, I, I, you know, am committed to the idea that that this can change, that there can be a, you know, a real success for, for information, not disinformation.

That requires, you know, eliminating criminal defamation.

It requires government support for local media, for public service media, and it requires governments and political leaders to just stop sharing disinformation and denigrating the press.

But again, many of those things are not about law.

They're about changed attitudes, changed rhetoric and and we need to push them, push those leaders and push those institutions to behave accordingly.

Mr Kate, thank you so much for this last press conference and special voter and good luck with your next assignment.

And thank you to all journalists to attend this press conference.

Goodbye.

Good afternoon.

Thank you, Martin.

Thanks everybody.