“Unfortunately, the indicators are not good at all. For example, in our last World Trends Report on Freedom of Expression and Media Development, we underlined that 85 percent, I will repeat, 85 percent of the world’s population has experienced a decrease in their freedom of expression in the last preceding 5 years,” Guilherme Canela, chief of the section of Freedom of Expression and Safety of Journalists at UNESCO, told Rudaw’s Zhyar Hakim on Tuesday.
Calling it a “perfect storm,” Canela stressed that problems ranging from the conditions of news media to survive and government regulations that are not aligned with international freedom of expression standards to disinformation, misinformation, and conspiracy theories all compound the challenges facing the global freedom of expression.
“We want to make sure that this is a hiccup and does not become a permanent trend in terms of the challenges for freedom of expression,” he said, adding that UNESCO strive to strengthen the “bedrock rights for democracies and the protection of all other human rights.”