Freedom of Expression

The Justice Initiative Freedom of Expression Program promotes the fundamental freedom, guaranteed by international and regional bills of rights, to impart and receive information and ideas. Currently the program focuses on threats to free expression that arise in the following contexts:

Defamation and Sedition Laws and Practices

Governments and officials in many countries around the world, including occasionally in established democracies, continue to use inappropriate criminal and civil defamation laws to silence the media and other voices. The Justice Initiative advocates against criminal defamation and other content-based criminal sanctions, which are inherently inimical to freedom of expression and the values of an open society.

We also recognize and seek to address the chilling effects of excessive damage awards and other problematic aspects of civil defamation. The alternative promoted by the Justice Initiative is civil defamation laws that strike an appropriate balance between freedom of expression, on the one hand, and reputational and privacy rights, on the other. The greater the public interest in receiving information and ideas, the greater should be the weight accorded to free expression and information.

To promote these objectives, the Justice Initiative uses advocacy, technical assistance and strategic litigation. In Kosovo, for example, we worked with the Office of the United Nations Special Representative to improve and rationalize the criminal defamation provisions of the new Criminal Code. In Bulgaria we supported an application to the European Court of Human Rights by an investigative journalist improperly sanctioned for defamation in Bulgaria’s courts. We combine litigation and advocacy in similar projects in Russia, Eastern Europe, Central Asia and Western Africa.

Financial Pressure and Other Indirect Interference

Persistent watchdog monitoring combined with international condemnation are making the outright suppression of free expression more and more untenable for governments. Where the authorities lack the political will to let a genuinely open society develop, however, they often employ covert and indirect means to interfere with freedom of speech.

Indirect interference of this kind takes various forms. These include the discriminatory use of state subsidies and advertising, pressures on private advertisers, unjustified denial of access to printing facilities, unfair application of tax and labor laws, and a myriad other types of indirect pressures, all aimed at silencing dissenters and interfering with the free flow of information and ideas.

The Justice Initiative is working to document and publish such abuses, and develop new standards and remedies In particular, we seek to promote the use of both traditional and innovative legal strategies in order to offset, minimize or eliminate the negative effect of indirect interference with free expression. Projects are currently being developed in Africa, Europe, and Latin America.

Fairness and Pluralism in Broadcasting

Radio and television broadcasting is a key source of information and ideas around the world. Its democratic potential is denied, however, to many through arbitrary, discriminatory and exclusionary licensing practices. The victims include indigenous communities in Latin America, political dissenters in the former Soviet republics, and entire nations in sub-Saharan Africa. The Justice Initiative promotes fairness and pluralism in broadcasting by combating undemocratic practices such as legal or de facto bans on private broadcasting, denial of access to the airwaves for independent or community broadcasters, and discrimination in allocation of licenses.

The Justice Initiative is working to bring to an end the legal exclusion of long-marginalized community radio stations in Mexico. Harassment of community broadcasters in Africa and Latin America, and state monopolies on television in Africa, are likely areas of involvement in the future.

Capacity Building of Lawyers and NGOs

The Justice Initiative is involved in a number of initiatives to train young media lawyers from the regions in which it operates. These programs are run in cooperation with OSI’s Network Media Program, which works with many of the world’s leading media freedom NGOs.

The first Media Law Advocates Summer School was held in Oxford in the summer of 2002, in cooperation with the Oxford Program in Media Law and Policy. Twenty-five young lawyers from South-East Europe and the Southern Caucasus participated in seminars on media freedom standards, a discussion of national freedom of expression cases and a moot court held in a real courtroom. The second Media Law Advocates Training Program took place over in July-August 2003. The program was expanded to include, besides southeast Europe and the Caucasus, Council of Europe members Moldova, the Russian Federation and Ukraine.

Such trainings give participants an excellent opportunity to network with media lawyers and activists from other countries and to acquire valuable comparative perspectives. We are exploring opportunities for extending our capacity-building activities beyond the region of the former Soviet Union and eastern Europe.

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