IFJ Voice April 2019: A word from our president

Reconciliation and the fight against impunity will be key themes at the IFJ Congress in Tunis, which is on the horizon. With it comes the end of my mandate which I wanted to devote to strengthening the unity of the Federation.

The objective was achieved in Africa with the Khartoum Congress in December 2018. This congress achieved the long-awaited reconciliation, which will enable all IFJ African trade unions and member associations to tackle together, within the Federation of African Journalists, the major problems facing all journalists on the continent.

Safety is one of these issues, if not the main one, making the fight against the enduring impunity enjoyed by killers of journalists around the world a priority for the IFJ, which has proposed a draft convention for the United Nations General Assembly. In order to bring this text to the General Assembly, and crucially to ensure its adoption, the IFJ leadership has launched a major campaign to promote it and already mobilised many important partners around this project. This is a long-term endeavour, which is far from complete: it requires the contribution of all, at all levels, to convince governments to support it.

This common struggle illustrates how defending the rights of journalists is not only the business of the IFJ Executive Committee, and in particular its President, and its staff, but also of all its members. It is only together that we can carry out the struggles that concern us all

See you in Tunis to meet these new challenges

Philippe Leruth

IFJ President

For more information, please contact IFJ on +32 2 235 22 16

The IFJ represents more than 600,000 journalists in 146 countries

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