ORGANISERS
Justice for Journalists Foundation (JFJ) is a London-based charity whose mission is to fight impunity for attacks against media. Justice for Journalists Foundation monitors attacks against media workers and funds investigations worldwide into violence and abuse against professional and citizen journalists. Justice for Journalists Foundation organises media security training and creates educational materials to raise awareness about the dangers to media freedom and methods of protection from them.
JFJ’s activity consists of three main components:
- Grants for investigating violence and abuse against professional and citizen media workers;
- Media risk mapping via monitoring, analysing and publicising violence and abuse against media workers;
- Training and education via online and offline media safety trainings in Orkhan Dzhemal Media Safety Academy;
- Raising public awareness about the realities of media work worldwide via visual and print materials, as well as conferences, roundtables, seminars.
As part of the JFJ Investigative Grant Programme, we allocated some funds to international NGOs to explore how SLAPPs are applied to obstruct journalists’ investigative efforts. We have provided funding to those initiatives that are documenting and analysing SLAPPs.
The Foreign Policy Centre (FPC) is an outward-looking, non-partisan international affairs think tank based in the UK. Our mission is to provide an open and accessible space for the ideas, knowledge and experience of experts, academics and activists from across the world, so that their voices can be heard by a global audience of citizens and decision makers in order to find solutions to today’s international challenges.
The FPC has a global perspective and a focus on Europe, the former Soviet Union, the Middle East and Asia. We also seek to examine what a progressive, pragmatic and internationalist foreign policy for the United Kingdom could be. A commitment to democracy, human rights, good governance and conflict resolution is at the heart of our work.
The FPC has examined the issue of SLAPP as part of it’s Unsafe for Scrutiny project, kindly funded by JFJ, which examines issues at the nexus of safety of journalists and anti-corruption, with a particular focus on the UK.
In partnership with
The International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute (IBAHRI) works with the global legal community to promote and protect human rights and the independence of the legal profession worldwide. The IBAHRI is the Secretariat to the High Level Panel of Legal Experts on Media Freedom, the independent advisory body of the Media Freedom Coalition. The High Level Panel comprises a diverse group of leading international lawyers tasked with providing legal advice for the purposes of promoting and protecting a vibrant, free, and independent media.
SUPPORTING ORGANISATIONS
The Thomson Reuters Foundation is the corporate foundation of Thomson Reuters, the global news and information services company. As an independent charity, registered in the UK and the USA, we work to advance media freedom, foster more inclusive economies and promote human rights. Our media freedom works combines our unique blend of expertise in the journalism, media development and legal fields. We work with journalists, media managers, legal practitioners, policymakers, regulators, technologies, academia and businesses to foster a free and prosperous media ecosystem that can play a vital role in supporting democracy and development. TrustLaw is the Thomson Reuters Foundation’s global pro bono legal programme, connecting high-impact NGOs and social enterprises working to create social and environmental change with the best law firms and corporate legal teams to provide them with free legal assistance in order to produce ground-breaking legal research and offer innovative training courses worldwide.
Index on Censorship is a nonprofit that campaigns for and defends free expression worldwide. We publish work by censored writers and artists, promote debate, and monitor threats to free speech.
Index on Censorship has been working on SLAPPs since 2019. During this time, it has filed nearly a dozen media freedom alerts to the Council of Europe Platform for the Protection of Journalism and Safety of Journalists related to ongoing SLAPP cases. You can find Index’s video explaining SLAPPs here and a tool to help identify a SLAPP here.
The European Centre for Press and Media Freedom (ECPMF) is a non-profit organisation that was founded in Leipzig, Germany, 2015. It operates on the basis of the European Charter on Freedom of the Press and the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union. ECPMF’s mission is to promote, preserve and defend media freedom. We do this by monitoring violations, providing practical support and engaging diverse stakeholders across Europe.
Media Defence is an international human rights organisation which provides legal defence to journalists, citizen journalists and independent media around the world who are under threat for their reporting.
Media Defence works globally, where there is the greatest need. They defend journalists, citizen journalists and media outlets from legal threats that violate the right to freedom of expression so that they can continue to report on issues of public interest.
English PEN is one of the world’s oldest human rights organisations, championing the freedom to write and read. We are the founding centre of PEN International, a worldwide writers’ association with 145 centres in more than 100 countries. With the support of our members – a community of readers, writers and activists – we protect freedom of expression whenever it is under attack, support writers facing persecution around the world, and celebrate contemporary international writing with literary prizes, grants, events, and our online magazine PEN Transmissions.
English PEN’s work is made possible through core funding from Arts Council England and the TS Eliot Foundation alongside the support of members, project partners and Silver PEN partners.
ARTICLE 19 is an international human rights organisation that works to defend and promote freedom of expression and freedom of information worldwide.
ARTICLE 19 works for a world where all people everywhere can freely express themselves and actively engage in public life without fear of discrimination.
We do this by working on two interlocking freedoms which set the foundation for all our work:
- The Freedom to Speak concerns everyone’s right to express and disseminate opinions, ideas and information through any means, as well as to disagree with, and question power-holders.
- The Freedom to Know concerns the right to demand and receive information by power-holders for transparency, good governance and sustainable development.
When either of these freedoms comes under threat, either by the failure of power-holders to adequately protect them, ARTICLE 19 speaks with one voice, through courts of law, through global and regional organisations, and through civil society wherever we are present.
SPONSORS
RPC is an international law firm specialising in media and technology, retail and consumer, insurance, commercial and financial disputes and regulatory, with offices in London, Bristol, Hong Kong and Singapore. It has the largest and one of the most highly regarded media defence teams in the UK, recognised in the market as the “go to” firm for publishers and journalists facing media litigation, with long-standing experience of defending public interest reporting.
Wiggin is an award-winning law firm with significant experience in resolving complex media disputes, defending the freedom of writers and journalists. The team are known as fearsome tacticians, who have defended prominent SLAPPs in recent years, and worked closely with members of the UK Anti-SLAPP Coalition