Resident Coordinator’s Remarks at the UN Regional Workshop on Freedom of Expression

Shigeru Aoyagi, Ginevra Cucinotta, Resident Coordinators, distinguished guests, and colleagues.

First of all, I would like to thank Shigeru, for convening this workshop along with colleagues from UNESCO Headquarters and the UN System Staff College.

I hope this workshop will prove equally beneficial to RCs, RCO colleagues and UN Agency representatives from across Southeast Asia, following the first regional workshop last year, which was very well received and generated positive feedback.

We all recognize how important the freedom of speech, access to information, and safety of journalists are for societies across the region. Yet each country in this region is facing its own challenges in these critical and interconnected areas.

Free speech is a basic freedom that underpins all our other freedoms as the unrestricted flow of information is key to sustainable development, cohesion, and inclusion.

Threats to this freedom is directly linked to shrinking civic spaces, which is critical for advancing the SDGs.

Journalists and media outlets can serve as an important bulwark against this trend along with citizen journalism and robust online civic spaces, which are growing across the region.

However, even as the digital divide shrinks, we are facing challenges in the form of new restrictions being placed on online spaces by governments.

Last week I had the opportunity to address the Thai Journalist Association on National Journalist Day, which gave me an opportunity to discuss some of these issues with media professionals.

They stressed the importance of Thailand as a regional media hub with more than 300 foreign news organizations based in the country.  

Yet despite this robust media landscape, they told me, journalists continue to face various limits on their reporting.

One way in which their work is constrained involves punitive defamation laws to try and silence critical voices.

Strategic lawsuits against public participation, or SLAPP, can create economic burdens on journalists in defending themselves while their families and supporters can also be targeted for legal action.

Although SLAPP prosecutions against the media account for only 3% of cases, they can have a chilling effect on free speech and press freedom.

The UN Country Team is working to address this and other threats to freedom of speech and access to information through our Cooperation Framework with Thailand.

What we have learned is that some UN agencies have a greater depth of institutionalized relationship with the Government, which makes them especially well positioned to impact on these issues.

In Thailand one of these agencies is UNESCO, which has had a close working relationship with the country’s security apparatus. UNESCO has leveraged this to provide trainings to prosecutors, police officers and journalists.

These have been well received with the police requesting for all officers to be trained on freedom of assembly and safety of journalists in the run-up to national elections.

Another example of the depth of the UN’s ongoing relationship with the Government is the support UNODC is lending to the drafting of ministerial regulation on the use of force.

At the same time, Universal Periodic Reviews provide us with further opportunities for deepening dialogues with governments.

In this context Thailand’s commitment to improve the capacity of police, security forces and other law enforcement agencies to respect the rights of free assembly and expression creates entry points for the wider UN system to provide concrete support to meet their UPR commitments.

Going forward, we seek to strengthen interagency collaborations with government to expand the boundaries of free speech, ensure free access to information and protect the safety of journalists.

Workshops like this provide us with excellent opportunities to learn from each other on how to create new entry points in different country contexts for taking this agenda forward. 

I also know that we will be taking some of the lessons that we draw from this workshop to the RC’s retreat where UNESCO and OHCHR will be leading a more in-depth dialogue.

Let me thank you once again for participating in this workshop.