Thank you for the question. It's a very difficult one.
In my 20 years of experience as an international civil servant dealing with freedom of expression, I have witnessed all the different elements, and they are not all the same. In many situations, quiet diplomacy is very effective in dealing with those cases. In many other situations, being outspoken is the more efficient course of action. It's very difficult to know where precisely this would be the case because there aren't particular criteria to be applied.
That's why it is so important to have very conscious and permanent monitoring of freedom of expression and press freedom situations. These allow us a multilateral environment, but also bilateral diplomacy to be aware of what is the best situation to be applied in considering each case.
If you will allow me, in terms of the medium-term and long-term actions, we see in these reports that UNESCO has just launched that we still have 160 countries all over the world with defamation laws. Obviously, this kind of situation of arresting journalists and using criminal law to attack freedom of expression is only possible because we still have this kind of legislation that is completely against the international standards and the recommendations of the Human Rights Council and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
Countries like Canada can advocate even more for countries to really decriminalize freedom of expression and treat eventual problems of freedom of expression under civil law, not under criminal law.