WAN-Ifra has called on Pakistani president Asif Ali Zardari to end violence and intimidation against media professionals and take strong measures to end impunity in Pakistan, which it says is the world’s most dangerous country for journalists.



“Twenty-nine journalists have been killed in Pakistan in the past five years, many of them for carrying out their professional duties,” the group’s board says in a resolution issued yesterday in Dubai.

“Very few, if any, of the perpetrators have been brought to justice”

The resolution called for the government to ensure that state agencies carry out their duty to protect, not intimidate, journalists.

It also called on president Ali Zardari to ensure media professionals can conduct their work without fear of violence or retribution.



The full resolution can be read here.

WAN-IFRA issued three other resolutions that:



- Calls on the government of Ukraine, ahead of the World Newspaper Congress and World Editors Forum in Kiev in September, to make a concerted effort to improve press freedom in the country;



- Calls for constitutional guarantees of freedom of expression in Tunisia, and resistance to attempts to limit freedom of the press. The Board noted that how authorities handle the issue will have an impact far beyond Tunisia’s borders;


- Calls on the Turkish authorities to immediately release Ahmet Şık, Nedim Şener, and six other journalists jailed in connection with the ‘Ergenekon’ conspiracy and to uphold freedom of expression in Turkey.



WAN-Ifra, based in Paris, France, and Darmstadt, Germany, with subsidiaries in Singapore, India, Spain, France and Sweden, is a global organisation of the world’s newspapers and news publishers. It represents more than 18,000 publications, 15,000 online sites and over 3,000 companies in more than 120 countries.

Its core mission is to defend and promote press freedom, quality journalism and editorial integrity and the development of prosperous businesses.