International Protection of Journalists in the Framework of Protecting Human Rights Defenders

On the one hand, journalists play a notable role in awareness-raising as to issues regarding human beings including human rights through informing the public about the events. On the other, in accordance with the UN definition, human rights defender (HRD) is anyone who promotes human rights. That role and this definition, links at least a part of journalists to the concept of HRDs; in such a way that it could be said that some journalists appear as HRDs by dealing with human rights issues and promotion of human rights. As a result, it could be claimed that such journalists, in addition to specialized protections provided for them in the international legal system and in particular under IHRL and IHL, are entitled to protections of the newly-founded regime for protection of HRDs. It appears that, cooperation and convergence of the international actors engaged in these two protection regimes, can improve the protections laid down for the two influential groups namely the journalists and HRDs and whereby lead to the development of human rights norms as the preserver of human dignity and dignified life. This article, that is a mixture of translation and research, through a descriptive-analytic method attempts to deal with the protections provided for the journalists as promoters and consequently defenders of human rights.