PARIS, December 13. /TASS/. UNESCO Director General Audrey Azoulay’s report on journalist safety, which came under heavy criticism from the Russian mass media and journalists’ organizations, failed to be officially approved by the Intergovernmental Council of the International Program for the Development of Communication (IPDC), Russia’s Permanent Representative to UNESCO Rinat Alyautdinov said.
"In a first for the IPDC Intergovernmental Council, the report was not adopted but merely taken note of," he said. "The huge backlash the report faced from our journalistic community made its adoption in this initial version impossible."
According to the Russian diplomat, the decision on the report "was passed by the minority of delegations." "These were Western delegations and their satellites. But the majority - more than 20 out of 38 IPDC members disapproved of this report," Alyautdinov said, adding that this fact6 "undermines the report’s legitimacy as a reliable source of information about the problem of journalists’ security."
He recalled that at the very beginning of the discussion Russian has taken a tough position to "categorically reject this report, object to including Russian official data on the death of journalists and demand it be reviewed." However, countries of the collective West "defused from dialogue with countries on this matter," he added.
"The open letter of the Russian Union of Journalists to Azoulay was signed by tens, or maybe, about a hundred mass media outlets and associations not only from Russia, but also from other countries, for instance, Indonesia, Mexico, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Zimbabwe, and even Georgia," he stressed.
Report on the safety of journalists
The two-day session of the International Program for the Development of Communication, held on November 21 and 22 at UNESCO headquarters in Paris, discussed a wide range of issues related to media work, including the safety of journalists. The session included a report by UNESCO Director General Audrey Azoulay on the Safety of Journalists and the Danger of Impunity for 2022-2023.
According to the document presented at the session, between January 1, 2022, and December 31, 2023, 162 media workers were killed worldwide, including 72 in conflict zones. The annex to the report, which lists the cases of journalists killed by country, states that 14 media workers were killed in Ukraine in 2022-2023, with only one Russian - Rostislav Zhuravlev - allegedly killed, in connection with whose death the UNESCO Director General expressed "regret" in an official statement.