What: World Press Freedom Day
When: May 3, 2018
Why: To evaluate press freedom around the world
- World Press Freedom Day was celebrated across the world on May 3, 2018.
- The theme for this year was, ‘Keeping Power in Check: Media, Justice and The Rule of Law’.
- This year’s theme celebration highlights the importance of an enabling legal environment for press freedom and gives special attention to the role of an independent judiciary in ensuring legal guarantees for press freedom and the prosecution of crimes against journalists.
- The UN General Assembly declared May 3 to be World Press Freedom Day to evaluate press freedom around the world, to defend the media from attacks on their independence and to pay tribute to journalists who have lost their lives while following their profession.
- Afghanistan’s slain journalists were remembered on World Press Freedom Day on May 3, days after the deadliest attack on the country’s media since the fall of the Taliban in 2001.
- A double suicide blast in Kabul on Monday left 25 people dead including ten journalists.
About the World Press Freedom Day
- World Press Freedom Day was proclaimed by the UN General Assembly in 1993 following a Recommendation adopted at the twenty-sixth session of UNESCO’s General Conference in 1991. This, in turn, was a response to a call by African journalists who in 1991 produced the landmark Windhoek Declaration on media pluralism and independence.
- The World Press Freedom day serves as an occasion to encourage and develop initiatives in favour of press freedom, and to assess the state of press freedom worldwide.
