ARTICLE 19 expresses support for a new strong resolution on the safety of journalists adopted by consensus at the UN Human Rights Council on 7 July 2025. The resolution was led by Austria together with a core group consisting of Brazil, France, Greece, Morocco, Qatar, and Tunisia. It has also been co-sponsored by over 70 countries from all world regions, signalling a renewed international commitment to ensuring the safety of journalists worldwide.
Since 2012, the Human Rights Council has adopted resolutions on the safety of journalists every two to three years, with each iteration responding to emerging threats and setting increasingly progressive standards. This resolution adds strong new language and commitments to this now robust set of international standards, with new language on strategic lawsuits against public participation (SLAPPs), surveillance, armed conflict and occupation, social media companies, and transnational repression. The resolution also maintains its gender-responsive approach and recommendations tailored to the pervasive and uniquely gendered risks women journalists face for carrying out their work. The resolution has also mandated the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to conduct a comprehensive study to assess the effectiveness of national frameworks for the protection of journalists.
This resolution represents a strong political commitment by States to act in line with their binding international human rights law obligations and carries significant normative weight. We now urge all governments to translate these new commitments into allocation of resources and political will at the national level to prevent, protect, and remedy all human rights violations against journalists.
ARTICLE 19 closely engaged throughout the process, including through sending written inputs, meeting with delegations, and taking part in negotiations. This statement provides an analysis of key developments in the resolution.
SLAPPs
In 2022, the previous iteration became the first UN resolution to address the issue of SLAPPs. The new resolution builds on this momentum and now becomes the first to call on States to take a wide range of concrete, specific measures to prevent, mitigate, and remedy this phenomenon – including ensuring early dismissal of unfounded proceedings, upholding the protection and defence of public interest, ending forum shopping, issuing appropriate penalties to abusive plaintiffs, and providing legal support and remedies to victims, as well as training prosecutors, judges, and lawyers in recognising and dealing with such cases.
Across the globe, powerful politicians and wealthy businesspeople continue to file these lawsuits to intimidate and harass journalists who expose their corruption and wrongdoing. The parcel of measures in the resolution prevent and mitigate the impacts of journalists being financially and psychologically drained in lengthy judicial processes, in turn lifting the chilling effects these lawsuits have on media freedom and democratic values.
We now urge all States to adopt and implement comprehensive anti-SLAPP legislation and protections that are fully in line with the commitments in the resolution.
Surveillance
The new resolution builds on existing commitments on surveillance, recognising the often overlooked psychological impacts on journalists and calling on governments to put in place effective regulatory frameworks on such technologies. Crucially, it also calls on surveillance technology companies to conduct and publicly disclose robust human rights due diligence for all proposed transfers of surveillance technology and refrain from exporting surveillance technology if there is a significant risk it will be used to commit human rights violations and abuses.
These new commitments are vital in a world where spyware and other surveillance tools are having critical chilling effects on media freedom – from Mexico to Slovakia. Awareness of potential monitoring deters journalists from covering sensitive topics, engaging in investigative reporting, or communicating with vulnerable sources. This ultimately undermines the diversity, independence, and long-term viability of the media sector. The use of these technologies can also not be seen in isolation, and often leads to other human rights violations – from killings, to disappearances, to arbitrary detention. This has been facilitated by businesses developing and selling such technologies with little to no human rights impact assessments or due diligence.
We call on States and businesses alike to fully implement these new commitments. We also reiterate civil society’s call for all future relevant UN resolutions to recognise the need for a global moratorium on the sale, transfer and use of surveillance technology.
Armed conflict and occupation
The resolution introduces strong language related to armed conflict and occupation, stressing the importance of access of local and foreign media in these situations and recognising journalists and media workers as civilians in accordance with international humanitarian law. It calls on States to refrain from targeting journalists and media workers in armed conflict and situations of occupation or to exert any kind of reprisal on them for their coverage, as well as to abstain from using, disseminating or encouraging third parties to disseminate information in ways that could result in inflicting harm on them.
During conflict, the importance of journalists and the media cannot be overstated: they disseminate lifesaving information, bring war crimes to light, and amplify the voices of people trapped amid violence. Despite international humanitarian law explicitly prohibiting the targeting of journalists, they are often killed, kidnapped, tortured, harassed, and prevented from entering conflict zones to carry out their vital work, and media outlets are regularly banned, restricted, or attacked during conflicts. Israel’s war on Gaza has been one of the deadliest conflicts for journalists and media professionals in recent history, with nearly 200 killed since the start of the war, alongside displacement, starvation, and other egregious human rights violations.
We urge all States to uphold freedom of expression and media freedom during armed conflict, as it enables the enjoyment of other human rights and fosters an environment conducive to respect of international humanitarian law. We emphasise the protection of freedom of expression during armed conflict requires investment during pre- and post-conflict times, including through enhancing media independence and plurality, promoting government transparency, and societal resilience.
Transnational repression
In line with other recent resolutions, this resolution indirectly touches on transnational repression, expressing grave concern about repressive activities conducted abroad by States outside their own jurisdiction to harm, silence, and intimidate journalists and media workers through digital, physical and other means, including through the misuse of spyware and other intrusive surveillance software, and the targeting of family members, representatives or associates.
In recent years, authoritarian governments have increasingly reached beyond their own borders to commit egregious human rights violations against those expressing critical or dissenting views – from killings to physical attacks, abductions, surveillance, and other forms of harassment. The rise of transnational repression is having an existential impact on human rights in every corner of the globe, creating a world where human rights defenders and other civil society actors – as well as their families – have nowhere to hide from the grip of authoritarian regimes.
We urge States to immediately refrain from committing, co-opting or condoning acts of transnational repression against journalists and their families. We also urge third States to provide protection to journalists and their families targeted by acts of transnational repression on their territory and to ensure that all such acts are investigated and prosecuted promptly, fully, and effectively. We also urge State delegations to ensure all future resolutions in this space constructively and explicitly contend with transnational repression. The heated politicisation of transnational repression in this space is thwarting progress and ultimately does a disservice to journalists and media workers subject to such attacks worldwide.
Social media companies
The resolution scales up language on the responsibilities of social media companies, stressing the need for them to conduct regular human rights impact assessments of their products, operations, and policies and implement due diligence processes with a view to identifying, preventing, or mitigating any actual or potential adverse impacts on human rights and the safety and work of journalists, and to establish accessible escalation channels that allow journalists to easily report online violence.
Although dominant social media platforms have created new opportunities for journalists to communicate and organise, they have also reproduced patterns of harassment and abuse that journalists face throughout their journalistic or public interest activities, especially for women and those that face multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination. At the same time, the largest platforms often yield to government pressure to restrict the content of journalist and media workers rather than conduct a thorough human rights impact assessments of their demands.
We urge social media companies to take heed of this new language and live up to their responsibility to respect human rights, including when it comes to content moderation, and to understand the contexts in which they operate.