1991 — Windhoek Press Freedom Declaration

On May 3, 1991, sixty African journalists gathered in Windhoek, Namibia, and signed the Windhoek Declaration. Together they demanded an independent, pluralistic, and free press across the continent, putting in clear words what many newsrooms had long risked their safety to practice in silence and under constant pressure.

They acted even as seventeen of their colleagues sat in prison and forty-eight had been killed for telling the truth. Two years later, the United Nations made this date World Press Freedom Day. The Windhoek text endured as a blueprint, carried from Alma-Ata to Santiago, for journalists everywhere who insist that a free press belongs to everyone.