It is no exaggeration to state that we are experiencing a widespread crackdown on freedom of expression – in the words of our Media Law Working Group Chair Dick Winfield, a pandemic within a pandemic. Journalists, bloggers, human rights activists, and media outlets are bearing the brunt of these assaults. They’re in need of effective legal countermeasures – and ISLP’s Media Law Working Group has devised one that has been successfully deployed in six recent cases in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA).
ISLP has cited speech-protective case law from Article 10 of the prestigious European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in courts outside Europe to win the freedom of six journalists and bloggers in Morocco, Algeria, Iraq, and Palestine. Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR)’s similarity to Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which virtually all countries have signed, makes this legal countermeasure effective. In carrying out this defense, counsel or a third-party intervenor would argue that in signing on to the ICCPR, the government bound itself to protect freedom of expression. Thus, domestic courts must not enforce imprisonment law that would violate ECHR Article 10 because such a violation would also run afoul of their obligations as signatories to the ICCPR.
Our goal is to deploy this countermeasure to defend more journalists and bloggers – and to train local lawyers to deploy it as well – in more foreign courts in Sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere, as the need arises and resources permit.