Friday Lecture: 'The Duty to Cooperate and the Role of Independent Expert Bodies: The Case of the High Level Panel of Legal Experts on Media Freedom and the Media Freedom Coalition of States' - Can Yeginsu

Lecture summary: At a time where questions abound about the state and future of international cooperation and compliance across the international legal system, this lecture will consider the new partnership of countries established in 2019 to promote and protect media freedom globally – the Media Freedom Coalition of States. The Coalition offers a new paradigm that seeks to answer some of the systemic challenges to State cooperation and compliance today, here in the area of freedom of expression, and one that puts independent experts in international law at the very centre of its institutional and operational framework.

The lecture will chart the establishment and work of the Coalition, through the perspective of its independent panel of legal experts, the High Level Panel of Legal Experts on Media Freedom, and the Panel’s work advising States and international organisations across a broad panoply of media freedom issues, and answering requests by international courts and tribunals to intervene in cases of public importance engaging Article 19 of the ICCPR and UDHR. It will focus on examples of areas where specific recommendations by legal experts have already been turned into State policy and practice (for instance, with the creation and implementation of an emergency visa for journalists at risk), and areas where the progress towards implementation has been altogether more challenging.

Five years on from its establishment, the Media Freedom Coalition finds itself at a crossroads, while its tri-partite structure of States, legal experts, and civil society is already being replicated by States in other areas of international legal cooperation and compliance.

Speaker Biography: Can Yeğinsu is a barrister practising from 3 Verulam Buildings in London where he practises in commercial litigation, international commercial and investment arbitration, public law and human rights, and public international law.

Prof Yeğinsu is also a long-standing member of the Law Faculties of Georgetown Law, Columbia Law, and Koç University Law School where he teaches courses on public international law, including courses on international dispute settlement, international human rights, and international investment law. He is a Senior Fellow at Columbia Law School’s Human Rights Institute, and serves on the Executive Council of the American Society of International Law.

In 2022, Prof Yeğinsu was appointed by the Lord Neuberger of Abbotsbury, with Catherine Amirfar, to succeed Amal Clooney as the Deputy Chair of the High Level Panel of Legal Experts on Media Freedom, having served as a member of the Panel since its established in 2019.