H.E. José Dos Santos
SADC Chairperson
SADC House
Gaborone
Botswana
Fax: (+ 267) 3972 848

Vienna, 26 November 2002

Your Excellency,

The Executive Board of the International Press Institute (IPI), meeting in Vienna, Austria, on 23 November 2002, has learned with approval of the decision by the Parliamentary Forum of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the Media Institute of Southern Africa in Lusaka, Zambia, on 19 October 2002 to request SADC governments to re-affirm their commitment to the principles of freedom of expression and freedom of the media contained in Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Windhoek Declaration of 1991.

In addition, the delegates at the Lusaka meeting decided to request their governments to review legislation in their statute books and scrap all provisions in conflict with those principles.

These are enlightened and significant and the IPI, the global network of editors, media executives and leading journalists from 115 countries, urges the SADC governments to adopt them and to proceed with all speed to review their laws and to scrap all those that are in conflict with the principles contained in those protocols.

IPI offers assistance to governments seeking to implement the decisions and points out that this initiative will be welcomed by free media throughout the world. It will be seen as a far-sighted moved which will place SADC countries in the forefront of those seeking to strengthen democracy. It will also add considerable impetus to the democratic aims of the newly-formed African Union and New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD).

Yours sincerely,

Johann P. Fritz
Director

Cc:
Dr. P. Ramsamy, Executive Secretary, SADC
Dr. Kasuka Mutukwa, Secretary-General, SADC Parliamentary Forum