Miami (February 20, 2023) - The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) will actively participate in the Unesco World Conference "Internet for Trust" starting Tuesday in Paris, France, with more than 3,000 representatives of governments, regulatory bodies, digital companies, academia, and civil society.
The conference aims to create guidelines for the regulation of digital platforms with input from stakeholders to safeguard freedom of expression and access to information. "We face one of our time's most complex and decisive challenges. We will face it together, establishing common principles based on human rights, particularly freedom of expression," said Unesco Director-General Audrey Azoulay.
Jorge Canahuati Larach, former president (2020-2022) and president of the IAPA's Advisory Council, will be a member of a panel on "Unpacking the implementation of regulating platforms." His presentation will address the importance of self-regulation and the fact that excessive government regulations could be an excuse to censor platforms and, therefore, the journalistic content they distribute.
The panel will include content regulation, public policy, and human rights specialists from South Africa, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Pakistan. The moderator is Alison Gilwald, former Rapporteur on Human Rights and Access to Information from the African Commission on Human Rights.
Canahuati will hold meetings with representatives of digital platforms, the president of WAN-Ifra, Fernando de Yarza, and executives of other global press organizations.
The world conference "Internet for Trust" will be attended by journalists such as Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Ressa; Julia Angwin, Pulitzer Prize winner; Christophe Deloire, executive director of Reporters Without Borders (RSF); Ian Phillips, vice president of International News of The Associated Press; Felipe Neto, Brazilian Youtuber with more than 44 million subscribers and Churchill Otieno, president of the Society of East African Editors, among others.
Unesco's world conference will end on Thursday, February 23. Unesco will transfer the results to the World Press Freedom Day meeting at the United Nations headquarters in New York on May 3.
