The issue of safety of media professionals and human rights defenders in the jurisprudence of the un Human Rights Committee

Attacks against media professionals and human rights defenders do not only harm the individual victim but the whole society. In the system of the UN Human Rights Committee (HRC), the issue of the legal protection of these groups of individuals has essentially been equated with the protection of the main civil forces which influence domestically the achievement of the democratic values and objectives that are enshrined in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. In the supervision of a State's compliance with the treaty, the HRC builds on and expands its existing jurisprudence on violence against the individual by increasingly developing and improving a multilevel framework of the State's obligations that extend to critical procedural safeguards. Given the stakes involved, the legal protection of media professionals and human rights defenders has become a key case-study of effectiveness and rigour of every international law system of human rights.