Mr Aidan Sullivan – UK based Vice President Photo Assignment, Editorial Partnerships and Development Getty Images – launched A Day Without News? on February 22 of this year, the first anniversary of the deaths of journalists Marie Colvin and Remi Ochlik while covering the Syrian conflict.
The purpose of the campaign, which already has wide support across the international news media community, is:
• to draw sharper attention to the growing numbers of journalists who have been killed and injured in armed conflict, in some cases as a result of direct targeting by the belligerents;
• to develop a public diplomacy, institutional and legal agenda to combat this more effectively; and
• to investigate and collect evidence in support of prosecutable cases in this area.
Six months on and A Day Without News? has announce that one of their key objectives has been achieved.
Aidan writes:
‘Following our meetings with both the U.K. and U.S. United Nations Security Council missions urging them, during their respective presidencies of the council, to adopt a motion to discuss the protection of journalists and debate the strengthening of resolution 1738, a UN Security Council release states;
In July, the UN Security Council is scheduled to hold an open debate on the protection of journalists featuring briefings by representatives of the media.
This will be the first time the Council considers this issue in a separate meeting since the adoption of resolution 1738 on the protection of journalists on 23 December 2006.
‘It appears that the idea of having a meeting on the protection of journalists initially came from the UK. For practical reasons it preferred not to schedule such a meeting during its own presidency in June and therefore proposed it for July instead.’
Bravo and thank you to all of those who supported our campaign and we are proud to have played a part under the guidance of Sir Daniel Bethlehem and to help The Committee to Protect Journalists, Reporters Without Borders and Human Rights watch in their continuing efforts.’
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