Event
UNESCO marks World Press Freedom Day in Thailand
On World Press Freedom Day, 3 May, UNESCO and the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Thailand (FCCT) will co-host a public seminar, ‘Media freedom in Thailand post-election amidst environmental crisis, and the path towards anti-SLAPP Law.’
The on-site and live-streamed event is co-organized by the UNESCO Regional Office in Bangkok and the non-profit independent newspaper Prachatai.
The non-governmental organization Reporters sans frontières (Reporters Without Borders) will launch its annual World Press Freedom Index, which will be followed by a panel discussion addressing the state of the information ecosystem and press freedom in Thailand since the May 2023 general elections. Discussion will include reviewing progress made, to date, towards legislation to address the problem of Strategic Litigation Against Public Participation (SLAPP) cases.
The ‘Media Freedom’ seminar will highlight the 2024 global theme for World Press Freedom Day, ‘A Press for the Planet: Journalism in the face of the Environmental Crisis.’
The event will be live-streamed on Facebook LIVE with simultaneous interpretation in English on @unescobangkok and in Thai on @prachatai. For on-site participation, please register online here.
Also on 3 May, the independent non-governmental media organization Thai Journalist Association (TJA) will organize a separate World Press Freedom Day live seminar on ‘Media Freedom in the AI Era’, with the support of UNESCO and United States Embassy in Thailand.
The panel for the TJA seminar, moderated by Nat Bunyasiraiyanon, radio host of Mitikhao 90.5, will include high-level participants from the National Cyber Security Committee (NCSA), the Thai Radio and Television News Professional Council, the National Electronics and Computer Technology Center (NECTEC) and Krungthep Turakij newspaper.
Since 1993, World Press Freedom Day is commemorated globally on 3 May to raise awareness on the importance of media freedom for sustainable development and the exercise of universal human rights, as well as to remind governments of their commitment to uphold the right to #FreedomOfExpression as enshrined under Article 19 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
