IAPA to meet with Inter-American Human Rights Institute to discuss possibility of incorporating Declaration of Chapultepec into a hemisphere convention

(IAPA/IFEX) – An international delegation from the Inter American Press Association will meet in San José, Costa Rica on 25 June 1998 with representatives of the Inter-American Institute of Human Rights to discuss the possibilities of incorporating the Declaration of Chapultepec into a hemisphere convention to guarantee freedom of the press, free speech and people’s […]

(IAPA/IFEX) – An international delegation from the Inter American Press
Association will meet in San José, Costa Rica on 25 June 1998 with
representatives of the Inter-American Institute of Human Rights to discuss
the possibilities of incorporating the Declaration of Chapultepec into a
hemisphere convention to guarantee freedom of the press, free speech and
people’s right to information.

The representatives of the two organisations will look at how the
Declaration of Chapultepec, signed by seventeen heads of state and
government in the Americas since 1994, might be turned into a
hemisphere-wide document.

The IAPA delegation will be headed by Danilo Arbilla, editor of the
Montevideo, Uruguay news magazine “Búsqueda” and chairman of the Association
’s Committee on Freedom of the Press and Information, and will also include
former IAPA president Luis Gabriel Cano, “El Espectador”, Bogotá, Colombia;
executive director Julio E. Muñoz; deputy executive director Ricardo Trotti;
Chapultepec Project attorney Jairo Lanao and project administrator Sean
Casey.

Among those representing the Institute in the talks will be jurists Pedro
Nikken and Thomas Burgenthal, chairman and honorary chairman, respectively.

The meeting is being held as part of a sires of activities leading up to the
Chapultepec Conference on Freedom of Expression to be held in San José,
Costa Rica, 16-18 August with the participation of academics, judges,
lawyers, human rights activists, journalists and editors from throughout the
Americas.

Participants in the conference, to be held four years after the Declaration
containing ten principles for press freedom and free speech was drawn up in
Mexico City, will discuss laying the foundation for those principles to
become an effective instrument for eradicating obstacles to freedom of the
press in the Western Hemisphere.