Project Aladdin’s Executive Director Abe Radkin was invited to the Summit for Information and Democracy that took place in New York on September 22, 2022, during the UN General Assembly opening week. The summit, under the chairmanship of French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna and Reporters Without Borders, brought together foreign ministers and senior diplomats from 45 partner countries of the initiative, whose goal is to promote freedom of opinion and expression and access to free, pluralistic, and reliable information.
The second ministerial Summit for Information and Democracy that took place at the French consulate in New York was an important forum to discuss the challenges that the world is facing in the global information and communication space, between propaganda and manipulation campaigns, the spread of fake vaccine news via social media, the drastic curtailing of the freedom of the press and the need to strengthen independent journalism. Many Ministers of Foreign Affairs expressed alarm at the seemingly inexorable spread of fake news and disinformation.
The Ministers also proposed a variety of mechanism to counter this rising trend, including through legislation of the International Partnership for Information and Democracy. The latter was launched in September 2019 in New York and has been signed by 45 countries representing every region of the world. The partnership is intended to promote freedom of opinion and expression and access to free, pluralistic and reliable information by instituting democratic safeguards in the international information and communication space.