ARTICLE 19 and The Association of Technology, Education, Development, Research, Communication (TEDIC) welcome the opportunity to input into Paraguay’s fourth Universal Periodic Review (UPR). Our submission focuses on the right to freedom of expression, media freedom, and the safety of journalists, with a focus on gender and intersectionality. Our proposed recommendations call for an intersectional gender approach to the safety of journalists and media freedom, and for Paraguay to bring legislation in line with international human rights standards.
The Universal Periodic Review is a United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) mechanism through which the human rights record and commitments of every United Nations (UN) Member State are peer-reviewed by all other member states. ARTICLE 19 and TEDIC prepared a joint submission that analyses Paraguay’s progress on implementing recommendations related to the right to freedom of expression, media freedom, and the safety of journalists in the previous cycle, and highlights further urgent gaps in law and policy.
Key legislative challenges to freedom of expression in Paraguay include Law 7364/24 on control, transparency, and accountability of non-profit organisations – also known as the ‘anti-NGO law’. It follows a global trend of states including Russia, Venezuela, Hungary, and others using vague and burdensome registration legislation with severe and disproportionate penalties for noncompliance to establish excessive control over non-governmental organisations (NGOs), jeopardising freedom of association and threatening civic space.
The UPR submission also highlighted the threat that online gender-based harassment and abuse in digital environments poses to women journalists, explaining how it forms part of a continuum of violence that women face in online and offline spaces. The submission emphasised that online violence cannot be separated from broader gendered power dynamics and therefore requiring the use of an intersectional gendered approach. In addition, the submission analysed how Law 5777/16, designed to protect women from all forms of violence, has been distorted and invoked to censor critical reporting by journalists (including women journalists) of public figures, on the grounds that the critical reporting constituted ‘psychological violence’ against a woman (also a public figure).
The UPR submission calls for an intersectional gendered approach to uphold the safety of journalists, alongside strengthened judicial oversight and reforms to bring laws into compliance with Paraguay’s international human rights obligations.
Key recommendations include:
- Amend Law No. 7363/24 on control, transparency, and accountability of nonprofit organisations to ensure it is fully in line with international human rights laws and standards.
- Adopt comprehensive public policy measures to protect free expression, guarantee gender equality, and counter online gender-based harassment and abuse, ensuring women are at the centre of and involved in efforts to tackle the problem.
- Incorporate an intersectional gender perspective that considers the differentiated effects that technology-enabled harassment and abuse can have on vulnerable groups and communities into policies, mechanisms and practices concerning the safety of journalists, human rights defenders and other groups facing differentiated impact for exercising their human rights.
- Create a mechanism to protect human rights defenders and journalists that guarantees the exercise of the right to freedom of expression and access to information, both in the physical and digital spheres, incorporating an intersectional gender perspective.