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** Inside Expression
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** November 2024
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This month: Together, we can make women journalists #EquallySafe
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Dear John,

These 16 Days, will you take a feminist approach to the safety of women journalists?

Women’s right to freedom of expression is essential to ending inequality and gender-based discrimination. Upholding this right means ensuring that women can share their ideas and opinions without censorship, retaliation, discrimination, or violence.

Gender-based violence deprives half the population of this fundamental right.

Gender-based violence, and the fear and threat of such violence, silences women in countless ways:
* At protests, police brutality prevents women from expressing their views on social issues
* In the streets, sexual harassment prevents women from taking up public space
* Online, abuse prevents women from sharing their views and accessing information

The price is high for women who refuse to be silenced. Women who, despite the risks, raise their voices and speak truth to power. Women who insist on denouncing gender-based discrimination and holding leaders and corporations accountable for wrongdoing.

Ahead of International Women Human Rights Defenders Day tomorrow (Friday 29 November), we are looking at how gender-based violence affects women journalists – and how we can make them safer.
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According to the Committee to Protect Journalists ([link removed]) , 11 female journalists have been killed so far in 2024. Just this month, UNESCO revealed ([link removed]) that the number of female journalists killed is at its highest level since 2017 – and 85% of journalists’ murders go unpunished.

Killings are the most extreme method of censoring journalists – but they are not the only form that censorship takes.

ARTICLE 19 has found ([link removed]) that women journalists face uniquely gendered risks: from workplace harassment to online abuse and physical attacks.

These attacks have a chilling effect on women’s right to contribute to public debate. A recent study ([link removed]) found that, in response to online attacks – including death and rape threats – nearly a third of women journalists self-censored, and 1 in 5 withdrew from all online interaction.

The effects of this silencing are far-reaching: When women see other women abused for speaking out, they are less likely to raise their own voices.

This is disastrous for society’s right to know. When women journalists are hounded out of the public sphere, society is deprived of the perspectives of half the population, issues that affect women receive less media coverage ([link removed]) , and we all become less informed.
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** A gendered problem calls for a gendered solution
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Despite the deeply gendered nature of attacks against women journalists, measures to improve journalists’ safety often fail to consider women’s particular needs, and women are often excluded from decision-making processes.

And women journalists themselves are not a monolithic group.

The risks and abuse they face differ depending on their race, nationality, sexual orientation, religion, and other characteristics. Those who already face oppression in one form or another typically face greater risks and harsher abuse.

‘Black, Indigenous, Jewish, Arab and lesbian women journalists ... experienced both the highest rates and most severe impacts of online violence’

— ICFJ Online Violence Project ([link removed])

That’s why an intersectional feminist approach is needed to enhance the safety of all women journalists, everywhere.

Such an approach requires us to attend to women’s everyday lives, in all their diversity. It reminds us that women journalists are the experts on their own experiences. And it enables us to learn from their creativity and resilience in the face of structural inequalities.
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** #EquallySafe: Towards a feminist approach to the safety of journalists
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Since 2022, ARTICLE 19 has worked to develop and roll out this approach through our project Equally Safe: Towards a feminist approach to the safety of journalists ([link removed]) .

In 2024 we start the second phase of this project, which aims to consolidate practical approaches to women journalists’ safety, using a feminist and intersectional perspective.

‘Building feminist approaches to the safety of women journalists requires rethinking what justice and safety means to those facing gendered attacks – attacks that impede the exercise of their human rights.’

– Paulina Gutiérrez

Head of Protection and Civic Space, ARTICLE 19

Equally Safe takes a bottom-up approach.

We began by speaking with a diverse group of women journalists on the ground in 6 countries: Bangladesh, Brazil, Chile, Nepal, Paraguay, and Sri Lanka. They told us all about the risks they face, the solutions they are creating, and how allies worldwide can support them.

And we designed the project around their needs and priorities.

Women facing violence and discrimination are the authorities on their own lives and experiences. They must be at the decision-making table, designing solutions and guiding their adoption.
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In collaboration with women journalists and feminists, we have created a range of resources – including a global research report ([link removed]) , 6 case studies ([link removed]) , and a set of 3 practical guidelines ([link removed]) – to help civil society organisations and policymakers apply an intersectional feminist approach in their own work.

Our guidelines, for example, show how organisations working with women journalists can mainstream this approach into their work on:
* Monitoring and documenting attacks against journalists: From planning to interviewing survivors, avoiding re-victimisation, and managing the psychosocial impact of this vital work.
* Advocating on emblematic cases: From defining advocacy goals to selecting a case, managing expectations, and devising a post-advocacy exit strategy.
* Organising protection training: From safe transport and childcare considerations for participants to curriculum design, creating a safe space, dealing with trauma, and post-event review.

Drawing on ARTICLE 19’s experience, women journalists’ priorities, and global good practice, we show how civil society organisations can make their limited time and resources count.
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** These 16 Days, will you take a feminist approach to the safety of women journalists?
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** Podcasts: Women journalists on the frontlines
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Globally, we are witnessing more conflicts than at any time since World War II – and violence against women surges in conflict.

In 2023, conflict-related sexual violence increased ([link removed]) by a shocking 50% – and women and girls were the victims in more than 95% ([link removed]) of cases.

The importance of journalists in wartime cannot be overstated: they risk their lives to disseminate lifesaving information, bring war crimes to light, and give a voice to people trapped amid violence.

Yet last year, more than half of journalists’ killings ([link removed]) took place in conflict and crisis zones – and 8 of the 11 female journalists killed ([link removed]) so far in 2024 were Palestinian.

ARTICLE 19’s Silenced podcast amplifies the voices of the journalists who risk it all to report the truth – including from warzones.


** Ukraine: ‘The war is not only waged on the battlefield’
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In September, Victoria Roshchyna ([link removed]) was the 9th female journalist to die reporting on Russia’s war against Ukraine. Of the journalists who have died reporting on Russia’s invasion ([link removed]) , 70% have been women.

In the latest episode of Silenced, ARTICLE 19 speaks to Ukrainian investigative journalist Anna Myroniuk about how she and her colleagues continued to report from Ukraine – despite missile strikes, internet shutdowns, and Russian propaganda.
Listen now ([link removed])

And back in April 2022, Ukrainian journalist Olga Tokariuk spoke to ARTICLE 19 from a bomb shelter about the threats facing journalists in the country and their heroic efforts to report the truth.

‘The war is not only waged on the battlefield with tanks and missiles and air defence systems. It’s also waged in the media space.’

– Olga Tokariuk

Ukrainian journalist
Listen now ([link removed])


** Gaza: How do you report on a war, when the war is at home?
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In May, we asked Al Jazeera Gaza correspondent Youmna ElSayed: How do you report on a war, when the war is at home?

Youmna tells ARTICLE 19 about the personal and professional costs of covering the war, the impact it has had on her family, and the moment the Israeli Defence Forces called her home to issue a threat.
Listen now ([link removed])


** Sudan: The last international correspondent in Khartoum
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In June, we spoke to Hiba Morgan, the last remaining international correspondent in Khartoum.

She describes the atrocities she has witnessed in Sudan’s ‘Silent War’ ([link removed]) , the complexities of verifying information in a rapidly changing situation, and her determination to continue reporting from inside the country.
Listen now ([link removed])


** Afghanistan: Women-led media vs. the Taliban
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On 15 August 2021, Zahra Joya was at the office of Rukhshana, the first female-led media outlet in Afghanistan, planning the day’s coverage with the network of female reporters she manages across the country.

Within hours, the Taliban’s flags lined the streets, women were forced back inside their homes – and Rukhshana, which is openly critical of the Taliban, was in grave danger.

Zahra tells ARTICLE 19 about the day the Taliban took over, being airlifted to safety, and leading a remote team while living in exile.
Listen now ([link removed])


** Coming next week…
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A new ARTICLE 19 policy on protecting free expression in armed conflict.


** These 16 Days, will you join us to make women journalists #EquallySafe?
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