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The Role of the United Nations Organization to Ensure the International Protection of Journalists in Non-International Armed Conflicts

Institution of author: Al Ain University of Science and Technology, UAE

"The non-international armed conflicts prevailing in the Middle East nowadays, have been witnessing a large number of atrocities committed against journalists. The study examined the extent to which international humanitarian law is able to provide special protection for Non-embedded (independent) journalists when covering non-international armed conflicts, and the initiatives taken by a United Nations organization to enforce the rules of this law and compel the conflict parties to respect it. The study found that United Nations Orgnization is playing a very vital role to enforce the international law of Journalists, especially during armed conflict situations. In recent years, United Nations seriously deal with this issue through a set of resolutions and plans, especially the 2015 UNSC resolution, which endorsed group of effective tools and mechanisms, the most important of them, from our point of view, is the need to end the impunity of the perpetrators of such crimes and prosecuting them before national or national courts as well as to take this issue in consideration with UN peacekeeping and special political missions. In our study, we agree with the view that the Conflict parties that deliberately target journalists will arguably not be deterred by a new treaty that affirms that journalists should not be made the object of attack. Therefore, promoting of understanding of the existing laws through media campaigns to support their enforcement, giving more coverage to International Humanitarian Law (IHL) breaches, and better training for journalists in IHL and International Criminal Court (ICC) processes, will be more effective." (Abstract)