Media Defence

On 24 June 2026, the Arusha Initiative will formally present the 2027 African Human Rights System Vacancy Situation Report during a multilingual webinar, bringing together AU Member States, NHRIs, bar associations, CSOs, and youth groups from across the continent.

The Report will be presented in English, French, Portuguese, and Arabic.

Register here https://shorturl.at/CHQTt.

📅 24 June | 3PM EAT / 2PM SAST

Sumayyah J Mokku, Litigation Counsel at the Katiba Institute, spent two weeks with us in London last month through Media Defence's Fellowship Programme. She left with new tools and a broader global perspective on defending press freedom. We left with a sharper understanding of what journalists in Kenya are up against.

Read her fellowship reflection:

From Nairobi to London: Media Defence Fellow Sumayyah J. Mokku on Defending Press Freedom in Kenya - Media Defence Media Defence’s Fellowship Programme supports lawyers working on freedom of expression in deepening their skills, broadening their networks, and connecting with peers across the globe. Our most recent legal fellow, Sumayyah J. Mokku, Litigation Counsel at the Katiba Institute and Advocate of the H...

For six years, Hungary's investigative journalists worked in a kind of legal limbo. Reporting in the public interest, meant constantly asking whether reporting was even possible.

The reason was Europe's flagship privacy law. The GDPR was being turned into an instrument of press suppression.

Our funded partner, the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union - HCLU, spent six years and more than thirty legal proceedings dismantling that distortion. They have now secured the most significant ruling of the fight.

In a new interview, HCLU legal experts Beatrix Vissy and Léna Perczel explain how data-protection law became a new tool for SLAPPs, how a notification trap was ending investigations before they began, how energy-drink billionaires brought more than 30 proceedings against Forbes Hungary, and how the Budapest Court of Appeal put press freedom back into Hungarian data law.

"Defending fundamental rights is very often about breaking the ice," Vissy says. "At first you see almost nothing, then only small cracks, but over time those cracks can lead to a larger break."

For Hungary's journalists, the cracks are showing.

👉 Read the full interview: https://www.mediadefence.org/news/gdpr-press-freedom-hungary-investigative-journalismgdpr-press-freedom-hungary-investigative-journalism/