UNESCO Urges Yemen’s Journalists to Join “No to Impunity”

To mark the International Day to end impunity for crimes against journalists, UNESCO along with some international organizations will launch a video campaign on November 2, calling upon Yemeni journalists to participate in it.

From UNESCO’s point of view, the international Day to end impunity for crimes against journalists, which marks November 2 each year, is an opportunity to raise awareness about the lack of security for journalists in Yemen and unify efforts to put an end to impunity for any attacks or crimes against journalists in the country.

In collaboration with several international organizations, including CPJ, IMS, RNW and GFMD, UNESCO indicated it proposed to organize this video campaign to mark the anniversary.

UNESCO explained that the campaign is a set of testimonies from Yemeni journalists who will share stories about which kind of threats/ attacks they find themselves face-to-face with during their daily work as journalists.

UNSECO will have the task of receiving and editing these testimonies, and it hopes that Yemeni journalists, as many as possible, accept to take place in the campaign through sending their testimonies that will be shared with the whole world so that this matter is ensured to be known for the public.

According to the organizer of the campaign, any journalist, who is working in Yemen or used to work there but he/she was forced to leave for various reasons and would like to participate in this campaign, should send a 10-second video containing own testimony about a threat or an attack she/he has to face in the daily work as a journalist.

Potential participants are called not to mention a name of a specific person, group or political party when describing the threat/attack, but to focus solely on what happened to them instead.

UNESCO urged participants to send videos via email “This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.” on October 10, 2016, and if materials are larger than 9 MB, it would be better to use www.wetransfer.com to upload them.

According UNESCO’s explanation, the final video will be published on certain social media platforms on November 2, and then sent to the media everywhere. In addition, a chosen testimony will be published every day for seven days.

It is worth mentioning that the United Nations General Assembly adopted Resolution A/RES/68/163 at its 68th session in 2013, which proclaimed 2 November as the ‘International Day to End Impunity for Crimes against Journalists’ (IDEI).