How can access to independent media in a post-2015 framework be measured?
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The World Press Freedom Day conference took place at the UNESCO headquarters in Paris earlier this week. Its theme - media freedom and the post 2015 development framework - added important heft to efforts to get these issues into the final declaration that will be agreed by the UN next September.
But one problem which the media support community can more immediately help with is measurement.
The UN High Level panel report published last year suggested that a goal on honest and accountable government and effective institutions be established. A component of it, the panel recommended, should be a target around ensuring “people enjoy freedom of speech, association, peaceful protest and access to independent media and information". Another is to "guarantee the public's right to information and access to government data".
The Paris conference spent a good deal of useful time affirming how important this goal was. What it didn’t solve is the many obstacles which stand in the way of its inclusion. Some of these - such as the intense suspicion of such a goal by many governments - will need to be solved by argument, advocacy and politics and those efforts are gathering pace. The measurement challenge, this conference aside, seems barely to have been recognised by those advocating for these issues.
We can’t honestly ask anyone to take this goal seriously until we come up with a clear system through which progress against the goal can be measured. This is fiendishly difficult.