Post-Soviet Media Law & Policy Newsletter

Issue 46 Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law May 15, 1998

SPECIAL ISSUE:
1997 U. S. State Department Country Reports on Human Rights Practices

    Each year, the United States State Department prepares Country Reports on Human Rights Practices.   These reports cover a number of categories, including freedom of speech and of the press. We have taken, from the recently-issued 1997 reports, those sections that specifically deal with press and media rights in the republics of the former Soviet Union, central and Eastern Europe. These are spotty, hardly comprehensive reports and vary in quality from country to country. We present them both because they contain valuable information and because they represent the State Department’s official assessment.

    This year, we have asked varous associates to review the reports and provide their professional assessments of the State Department’s coverage. They include Dan Bolger of Internews Armenia, Doug Campbell of Internews Georgia, Chrystyna Lapychak of the Committee to Protect Journalists, Persephone Miel of Internews Russia, Inna A. Pidluska of the Ukrainian Center for Independent Political Research, Elizabeth Schuster of Counterpart Consortium, Andrea Stallknecht of Internews Azerbaijan, and Stacy Sullivan of the Media Studies Center. Their commentaries will follow the reports. In addition, we provide the 1997 Report on Journaslists’ Rights in Russia prepared by the Glasnost Defense Foundation at the end of this issue.

    In an appendix to the reports, the State Department includes the following disclaimer:

We base the annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices on information available from all sources, including American and foreign government officials, victims of human rights abuse, academic and congressional studies, and reports from the press, international organizations, and nongovernmental organizations (NGO’s) concerned with human rights. We find particularly helpful, and make reference in most reports to, the role of NGO’s, ranging from groups in a single country to those that concern themselves with human rights worldwide. While much of the information we use is already public, information on particular abuses frequently cannot be attributed, for obvious reasons, to specific sources.

By law, we must submit the reports to Congress by January 31. To comply, we provide guidance to United States diplomatic missions in July for submission of draft reports in September and October, which we update by year’s end as necessary. Other offices in the Department of State provide contributions and the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor prepares a final draft. Because of the preparation time required, it is possible that yearend developments may not be fully reflected. We make every effort to include reference to major events or significant changes in trends.

INSIDE

1997 U. S. State Department Country Reports on Human Rights Practices