Commission

The International Commission on Information & Democracy

Seventy years after the UN General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Paris, the action of the International Commission on Information & Democracy gathered by RSF acts in a context where “the crisis of trust in democracies and the growing influence of despotic regimes pose a major threat to freedoms, civil harmony and peace.”

Political control of information in a globalized public space, the influence of private interests, the growing power of corporate actors who escape democratic control and the undermining of quality journalism are the leading causes.

The Commission on information & democracy, co-chaired by Christophe Deloire, Secretary General of Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and Shirin Ebadi, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, met for the first time on September 11th, 2018.

According to the mission statement, “The Declaration’s function will be to state principles, define objectives for decision-makers and propose forms of governance”. It “must set out human rights, especially those relating to freedom of expression, the principles of journalistic ethics, and an ethical code for the development and use of technologies and provide guidelines for both public and private-sector decision-makers”.