Regional Platform for Advocating Media Freedom and Journalists’ Safety in Western Balkans - Stakeholders

The Regional Platform for Advocating Media Freedom and Journalists’ Safety in Western Balkans is a network of journalists' associations and media trade unions established in January 2016. The Platform has been produced with the assistance of the European Union and functions as an early warning and prevention mechanism, monitoring attacks against journalists. It provides an accessible way to report violations and to search through six regional centers' databases of attacks.

Participating organizations are: BH Novinari for Bosnia Herzegovina, Croatian Association of Journalists (HND) for Croatia, Association of Journalists of Kosovo, Trade Union of Media of Montenegro, NUNS for Serbia and ZNM for Macedonia. 

Media, Conflict and Democratisation (MeCoDEM) - Stakeholders

The project ‘Media, Conflict and Democratisation ’ investigates the role of traditional media and ICTs in conflicts that accompany and follow transitions from authoritarian rule to more democratic forms of government.

The project si funded by the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme until 2017, and it is coordinated by the School of Media and Communication at the University of Leeds.

The project will investigate the interplay between media and democratisation conflicts in four countries: Serbia, Egypt, Kenya and South Africa.

ECPMF Alarm Centre for Female Journalists under Threat - Support Centres

On 8 March 2016, the ECPMF has created a special Women’s Reporting Point to address and raise awareness on increasing threats against female journalists.

Threats can be reported via encrypted messaging. The secure emails will only be opened by female staff at ECPMF headquarters and their contents will remain confidential. To provide appropriate legal assistance and solidarity to female journalists or media workers who report their cases, ECPMF is partnering with the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) and its Italian branch FNSI.

The rationale of this support measure stems from the consideration that female journalists are not only attacked because of their profession, they are also threatened because they are women, as pointed out also by the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media. Gender-based threats, such as sexual and abusive comments, threats of rape or publishing pictures and phone numbers on sex and dating websites target women more often than men.  

ECPMF encourages all women to report attacks in order to seek help, but also to make the dimension of attacks against journalists visible: the reported cases will be collected in a database – with details of the woman’s identity removed in order to protect her – as basis of an analysis to show the scale of the problem across Europe.

UNESCO - Stakeholders

UNESCO is the UN specialized agency with the mandate to promote "the free flow of ideas by word and image", and to nurture freedom of expression, media development, and access to information. It provides governments with technical advice on legal, regulatory, policy and other critical issues, and educates and builds capacities of journalists, media professionals and institutions.

UNESCO has a long-standing experience of promoting freedom of expression and media development in transitional countries, particularly in South East Europe and Turkey. In this respect, UNESCO contributed to the Guidelines for EU support to media freedom and integrity in enlargement countries 2014-2020.

From 2009 until 2011, UNESCO implemented the project "Alignment to International Standards in the Media Sector of South East European countries". From 2013 to 2015, a second project was implemented under the title "Media Accountability in South East Europe". In January 2016, the project "Building Trust in Media in South East Europe and Turkey " was launched, with the aim of supporting media accountability mechanisms, internal governance of media entities and media and information literacy in EU candidate and potential candidate countries with financial support of the European Commission, DG Near. 

Mérték Media Monitor - Stakeholders

The Mertek Media Monitor is a watchdog organisation and think tank founded in 2011 in Budapest to contribute to the Hungarian and European discourse on freedom of expression and press freedom. Mertek Media Monitor promotes the transparency of media policy decisions, evaluates media policy measures and lays out its own policy proposals.

European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) - Stakeholders

The European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) is the largest organisation of journalists in Europe, representing over 320,000 journalists in 72 journalists’ organisations across 45 countries.

The EFJ fights for social and professional rights of journalists working in all sectors of the media across Europe through strong trade unions and associations. The EFJ promotes and defends the rights to freedom of expression and information as guaranteed by Article 10 of the European convention on human rights.

The EFJ supports its affiliates to foster trade union development, to recruit new members, and to maintain or create environments in which quality, journalistic independence, pluralism, public service values, and decent work in the media exist.

ARTICLE 19 - Stakeholders

ARTICLE 19  takes its name from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). Headquartered in London since 1987, it operates worldwide to actively promote freedom of expression and information. It campaigns with people around the world for the right to exercise these rights, in particular designing laws and policies that protect free expression, holding abusers and governments to account, and advocate for legal reforms.

ARTICLE 19 also provides practical support for journalists and media practitioners under threat.  

Peace Institute - Stakeholders

The Peace Institute is a private, independent, non-profit research institution founded in 1991 and situated in Ljubljana (Slovenia). Among the activities of the Institute there are scientific research, advocacy, interdisciplinary research, educational and awareness-raising activities the areas of social science, humanities, anthropology and law, in five thematic fields: human rights and minorities, politics, media, gender and cultural policies. The Peace Institute is member of the South East European Network for Professionalization of Media.

South East European Network for Professionalization of Media - Stakeholders

The South East European Network for Professionalization of Media (SEENPM) promotes excellence in journalism and unites fifteen non-for-profit media cent­ers from eleven South East European and neigh­boring countries. Its main activities are policy initiatives, research and training to enhance the development of independent media, the strengthening of relations among journalists, and overall progress in the region.

Albanian Media Institute - Stakeholders

The Albanian Media Institute (AMI) is based in Tirana and is engaged in media policy issues such as the improvement of media legislation, Code of Ethics, various issues related to freedom of expression and access to information. The Institute has organized several research works, and provides training courses for journalists.