It is a moot point that the media play a critical role in enhancing the enjoyment of basic human rights.

At the same time, the media constitute an important object of human rights violations. It is important, then, to remind ourselves of how the media can serve as a vehicle for human rights protection.

This is important because the political elites – on both sides of the divide –need to understand that the media provide the public means through which the citizenry can communicate. As part of entrenching the role of the media in a democratic polity, we must recognise how media are intricately bound up with the right to communicate.

Many of the rights and responsibilities that we must enjoy as citizens would, in the final analysis, seem to hinge on the right to communicate. Take for example, the following rights and responsibilities. How can we effectively vote in free, fair and regular elections, let alone examine the conduct of public officials, without quality and unbiased information?

How can we hold office, let alone demand equal membership in the polity, without access to free and unfettered media? How can we petition our elected officials, let alone exercise our freedom of speech, media, political association and assembly, without keeping ourselves informed through the media.

Indeed, how do we get civically educated without a robust media system that gives access to most public information?

More importantly, what we have come to characterise as our civic responsibilities are made possible largely through the media. For example, we need a free and unbiased media system in order to ‘own’ the political system, such that the powers of citizenship are used in accordance with the fundamental democratic principles.

An uncompromised media system should help us to respect the rights and freedoms of others as well as express our solidarity with democratic politics. Only we can make democracy possible – it is not a thing that happens to us. It is something that we fashion out of our daily struggles for individual – and, yes, collective – freedoms. The media thus becomes an organic extension of our willingness to participate in civic life.

To dispense with a conceptual issue: According to the Center for Civic Education, although human rights have a specific historical context, such as their cultural and socio-economic moorings of mercantilism, domestic manufacturing and the Industrial Revolution, they have come to refer broadly to those rights that are inherent in human nature, essential to human need, or fundamental to human purpose – whether these rights arise from natural, positive, or constitutional sources.

What we may refer to as the global architecture of human rights implementation consists in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted in 1948 by the United Nations General Assembly. This represented a significant milestone in the development of human civilisation, particularly in the aftermath of the Holocaust. The Declaration recognises the universality of human rights. This is why Article 2 of the Declaration prohibits discrimination. It also recognises the inalienability of human rights.

Although the Declaration contains human rights which were considered fundamental at that time, the world has made repeated attempts at elaborating the bounds of the discourse of human rights. Such attempts have included the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action, adopted by the World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna on 25 June 1993. Since 1948, then, some core human rights treaties have been formulated to address specific human rights concerns, but these are not my concern here.

From the point of view of the media, Article 19 of the Declaration puts it forth: “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.” Clearly, such freedom cannot be publicly realised in the absence of a vibrant and open media system.

It is not only at the global level that the right to freedom of opinion and expression is recognised. At the continental level, there are other important human rights documents and bodies which enjoin on African states to facilitate the enjoyment of such a freedom. For example, the Declaration of Principles on Freedom of Expression in Africa, adopted by the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, in seeking to actualise freedom of expression, includes a number of points relevant for the development of broadcasting services on the continent.

These points include the need to encourage the development of private broadcasting; the need to transform state or government broadcasters into genuine public broadcasters; and the need for independent broadcasting regulatory bodies.

The African Charter on Broadcasting, adopted in 2001 on the tenth anniversary of the Windhoek Declaration on Promoting an Independent and Pluralistic African Press, extends the enjoyment of the right to freedom of expression to new information and communication technologies (ICTs).

In fact, the charter declares that the legal framework for broadcasting should include a clear statement of the principles underpinning broadcast regulation, including promoting respect for freedom of expression, diversity, and the free flow of information and ideas, as well as a three-tier system for broadcasting: public service, commercial and community.

In addition, the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights goes further. It has appointed a Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression in Africa to sensitise African states to the provisions of the Declaration of Principles on Freedom of Expression in Africa.

All these underscore the fact that there is continental political recognition of the right to freedom of expression. My key argument is that such a freedom is meaningless without the requisite media opportunities for its expression. It is for this reason that many have called for the right to communicate.

We must recognise the fact that the national context is a key determinant of the enforcement, promotion and implementation of human rights. There is evidence to suggest flagrant violations of human rights at the national level, including the right to communicate. In the context of Zambia, this seems to be happening by proxy. The suggestion to establish a statutory media regulatory regime is aimed at silencing the voices of dissent, thereby infringing upon the human rights of those who would want to express themselves through the media.

As Cees Hamelink, a Netherlands-based media-and-human-rights scholar observes, essential to any debate on human rights and the media is the observation that the media are also often a victim of the violation of the basic human right to freedom of information.

It is becoming increasingly clear that muzzling the press is a political strategy aimed at muzzling the citizenry. It cannot be denied that many of those who are incarcerated for expressing themselves against the political status quo do so in the media. Therefore, it stands to reason that silencing the press through unwarranted legislation amounts to silencing political dissent.

And advocating against such a statutory media regulatory regime is an exercise in human rights enforcement. Our struggle is not isolated. It is about protecting human rights, and especially the right to communicate. It is about protecting democratic openness. A state that seeks to uphold human rights will not allow a flagrant abuse of its citizens’ basic human rights through a legal framework that does not elevate the right to freedom of expression.