Foreign ministries

Foreign Ministries (FMs) serve as the normative and strategic hubs of state-craft—they articulate policy stances, engage in multilateral diplomacy, and frame national interests abroad. Their leadership is pivotal in elevating media-freedom and information-integrity considerations into foreign-policy, security and trade dialogues.

⚖️ Opportunities and Challenges

Opportunities:

• FMs can mainstream information-integrity and independent-media support into national foreign-policy strategies, linking them to human-rights, rule-of-law, and hybrid-threat-resilience agendas.

• They often have overarching diplomatic reach and the convening power to align national positions with multilateral frameworks — for example, by championing the Paris Declaration among EU peers.

• FMs are able to signal political will through high-level declarations and ministerial commitments, which in turn create enabling conditions for development agencies and embassies.

Lithuania ranks first according to the Index on International Media Freedom Support | Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of LithuaniaLithuania ranks first according to the Index on International Media Freedom Support | Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Lithuania

Challenges:

• Media-freedom support often remains an ‘add-on’ to core portfolios (trade, security, migration) rather than being an integrated policy stream—one official commented:

“In our annual planning, media support is accepted, but it still sits in the democracy unit and not connected to our strategic missions.”

• Institutional silos can limit link-up between diplomacy, defence/hybrid-threat units and dev-co units; as a result, media-integrity considerations may not inform foreign-policy assessments.

• Measuring impact in the foreign-policy space is difficult: the pathways from diplomatic statements to media-ecosystem change are indirect and long-term, which can discourage stronger engagement.

🧩 Strategic Recommendations

• Embed a “media & information integrity” pillar in the foreign-policy strategy: clearly state how support to independent media contributes to national interests (e.g., stability in the neighbourhood, countering influence ops, promoting open societies).

• Lead by example in multilateral fora: use the Paris Declaration as a normative anchor, urge non-signatory Member States to join, and align bilateral media-support policies with the Declaration’s commitments.

• Promote internal coordination mechanisms: establish inter-departmental task‐forces that bring together foreign-policy, defence/hybrid-threat, dev-co and trade units to ensure media-integrity is considered across policy domains.

• Promote peer learning and joint initiatives: participate in donor networks (OECD DAC, GFMD) and co-lead working groups on media-freedom support; this will align efforts, foster effectiveness (Principle 5) and reduce fragmentation.

• Champion accountability and transparency: encourage systematic tracking of media-support budgets, set clear strategic outcomes linked to media-ecosystem indicators, and ensure that diplomatic engagements promote independent media safety and pluralism (Principle 2).

• Use diplomatic leverage for enabling environments: in bilateral dialogues, raise concerns about press‐freedom violations, support journalists‐in‐exile schemes, and link media-integrity to wider foreign-policy tools (sanctions, visa regimes, platform governance).