French Foreign Minister, Philippe Douste-Blazy, has called on the UN Security Council to “unanimously” pass a draft
resolution aiming to protect journalists in conflict zones.
“The time has now come to count the votes,” Mr Douste-Blazy said during a
press conference in the presence of well-known journalists, including the
television news presenter Patrick Poivre d’Arvor and the former Iraq hostage
Florence Aubenas.
The minister said he wanted the text, which was tabled by France and Greece
at the beginning of December, to be passed “in a few hours’ or a few days’
time” and “unanimously”.
The draft resolution “condemns all attacks targeting journalists, media
workers and associated staff in situations of armed conflict and calls on
all parties to put an end to these practices”. “I fail to see who could not
vote for it,” Mr Douste-Blazy said.
Robert Menard, the general secretary of Reporters Without Borders (RWB), for
his part stressed that “in Iraq, in less than four years, 139 journalists
and media workers have been killed, twice as many as during the Vietnam war,
which lasted 20 years”. “These figures justify the urgency of the move” at
the UN, he said.