Over the next week I hope to do a few posts (or at least tweets) that try to capture some of the key points in my latest report on sources and whistleblowers. The report relied heavily upon input from governments and civil society, in particular the significant work done by organizations like Article 19, the Government Accountability Project, and the UN Office of Drugs and Crime. Over time, it’s my hope that governments reflect on and implement the recommendations the report makes, all of which rest on basic principles of freedom of expression as found in human rights law at the international and regional levels.
On October 22nd, I presented the report to the Third Committee of the General Assembly, sharing the podium with my colleagues Michel Forst, the special rapporteur on human rights defenders, and Heiner Bielefeldt, the special rapporteur on religious freedom. Our presentations are here. I did a press conference earlier in the day. And if you can’t get enough, HuffPost Live interviewed me about the report on October 26th. You can also find stories in The Intercept and Vice, among others, from last week.
I also want to give a big thank you to Human Rights Watch, which put together a great video that really summarizes not only the points in the report but also the principal policies that underlie whistleblower and source protections. Their video, which features me and a couple of well-known whistleblowers is here: