NO IMPUNITY Campaign

Implemented by SEENPM between December 2018 and May 2019, the NO IMPUNITY Campaign is aimed at raising public awareness of and persuading stakeholders to take action toward ending impunity for crimes against the right to freedom of expression and information in the Western Balkans.

Crimes aimed at silencing journalists and other public figures continue to occur frequently in the Western Balkans.

While civil society actors have often been successful in bringing the issues of journalists’ safety into public focus, response of the wider public and governments has generally been weak.

Considering that impunity for crimes against the right to freedom of expression and information has not been addressed directly and forcefully in recent years as a separate issue, the campaign will seek to reinsert it into public discourse through the production and targeted dissemination of a substantial volume of media advocacy content focused on impunity, including:

  • A background document highlighting key cases of impunity for crimes against the right to freedom of expression and information as well as trends in investigating and prosecuting such crimes.
  • Narrative pieces produced by leading journalists in the region with a view to highlighting individual cases of impunity. The pieces, to be furnished with multimedia elements, will focus on individual victims (mainly journalists) and tell the story of how the continued impunity for the crimes committed against them has affected their personal and professional lives as well as those of their families and colleagues.
  • Opinion and analysis pieces by leading freedom of expression experts aimed at raising the visibility of the issue of impunity, the ways in which impunity for crimes against freedom of expression and information affects democracy and public life, in particular.

The content will be first published on SEENPM’s websites www.seenpm.org and www.cimusee.org, the websites of SEENPM’s member organizations, and it will be widely disseminated via social networks and on the websites of international organizations dealing with freedom of expression.

 The project is part of the IFEX No Impunity campaign.