The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet has called for addressing all challenges facing freedom of the media and journalists and protecting activists and highlighting them. 
This is to build an effective partnership and seize all opportunities to achieve the desired goals, and avoid repercussions, expressing her aspiration that the Doha International Conference on Social Media would produce positive outputs in this regard.
Bachelet was addressing the delegates through a video message at the opening session of the the International Conference on ‘Social Media: Challenges and Ways to Promote Freedoms and Protect Activists’ yesterday. 
Bachelet touched on the significant changes and developments that has occurred in the fields of media, press, and social media due to the digital revolution, considering them an important issue for those who felt isolated in the past. 
At the same time, she warned that the data and information available through these media remain subject to surveillance and cyber attacks if their protection means were not improved, with the need to ensure that the relevant laws do not become vulnerable to defamation and counterfeiting.
Bachelet considered that the ongoing violations of human rights and the protection of civil space require the lifting of restrictions and barriers of the media, the press, human rights organisations, and an active civil society and loud critical voices. She further stressed that the laws protecting human rights can manage those risks and address them.
The conference discussed more than 40 working papers during interactive discussion sessions and distributed working groups, in which more than 300 international organisations, universities, think tanks, major specialised companies and social networks participated. 
In addition to that, there was a strong participation of journalists unions around the world, and 100 media outlets from inside and outside Qatar, including about 30 international media outlets, 25 journalists and media outlets from the local media, and 50 social media activists.