On 18 June 2025, ARTICLE 19 held a side event at the 59th session of the United Nations Human Rights Council to discuss the key challenges women journalists face and to propose an intersectional gender approach to the safety of journalists. It offered key recommendations to the many State delegations, UN officials, and civil society representatives present. This event took place alongside negotiations on a new UN resolution on the safety of journalists, which took a gender-responsive approach and includes recommendations tailored to the pervasive and uniquely gendered risks women journalists face when carrying out their work.
The panellists included Analy Nuño, an independent journalist from Mexico, and Mariela Cuevas from feminist digital rights organisation the Association of Technology, Education, Development, Research, Communication (TEDIC) in Paraguay. Together, they highlighted the unique protection needs of women journalists, honing in on the overlap between physical and online forms of violence and urging decision makers present to perceive these forms of violence as part of the same spectrum rather than discrete.
Following opening remarks from H.E. Dr Désirée Schweitzer, Permanent Representative of Austria to the United Nations in Geneva and H.E. Peter MacDougall, Permanent Representative of Canada to the United Nations in Geneva, moderator Maria Tranjan of ARTICLE 19 Brazil and South America asked Analy Nuño and Mariela Cuevas to explain, in the context of rising violence and harassment against journalists around the world, how these trends are gender-specific or gendered in their impact.
Analy Nuño reminded us that, in the Mexican context, threats can literally cost journalists their lives. She explained that multiple and overlapping forms of violence against journalists create ‘zones of silence’ where journalists cannot discuss certain topics without retribution, and that these zones are different for women journalists: unlike their male counterparts, authorities ‘question why we are here [in dangerous places] and blame us, asking why we cover these themes’ when threats are reported.
She also highlighted, using the concept of macrocriminality (macrocriminalidad), a lens used to identify the systems and relationships that enable crimes to take place, that these zones of silence are particularly prevalent when the power of the state, organised crime groups, and private companies mutually benefit from silencing journalists. Importantly, she noted how these threats worsen in their impact when women journalists come from lower-income backgrounds, indicating how protection mechanisms must account for women journalists experiencing overlapping forms of discrimination.
She related her experience of receiving violent threats over a period of two years, during which time the authorities did not take her case seriously because they did not perceive threats carried out online as ‘real’. Mariela Cuevas found similarities with the situation in Paraguay, where women journalists reporting on state corruption also face significant risks. She explained how threats carried out online cannot be understood as less severe than offline threats. They frequently escalate to offline attacks and have lasting psychological impacts, both on individual journalists and their communities. She asserted that we need to listen to women journalists and holistically articulate the impact of the threats they face so that online violence can be better addressed. This starts with naming the problem and recognising online gender-based violence as violence.
The panellists concluded that protection mechanisms for journalists need to change the threshold of what constitutes ‘real’ violence. This does not mean changing the criminal threshold, but rather using other tools available to address violence against journalists in all its forms, including online. The panellists also highlighted that formal protection mechanisms – if they are to be intersectional and gender-centred – need to include family, because these attacks are not directed against individuals alone.