Covering peace operations and enforcing humanitarian international law ?

Partager sur :

The growing media coverage of conflicts and peace operations has had important consequences in international humanitarian law. Thus, the nature and the shape of this media coverage have deeply changed: they are expressed through images rather than written words. We can also point out that the gap between media management of operations and operational information policy is narrowing and that, eventually, the military are increasingly active and responsible for their own media coverage through blogs. NGOs are experiencing an ambiguous status, intensified by insider journalists, since they are both beneficiaries and tributaries to this coverage: this accounts for new challenges for the quality of information, the freedom of the press, or for the insider journalist’s status regarding international humanitarian law. Despite the Geneva Convention and its protocols, international humanitarian law should adjust to these transformations and increase awareness on these issues among the various protagonists of these conflicts.