making an order prohibiting any publication of the present identity of the ward or her parents. The order bound everyone, whether a party to the proceedings or not: in other words, it was an order contra mundum. Similar orders have been made in subsequent cases: see, for example, In re M and N (Minors) (Wardship: Publication of Information) [1990] Fam 211 and In re R (Wardship: Restrictions on Publication) [1994] Fam 254.
(iii) Injunctions to protect human rights
32. It has been clear since the case of Venables v News Group Newspapers Ltd [2001] Fam 430 (“ Venables ”) that the court can grant an injunction contra mundum in order to enforce rights protected by the Human Rights Act 1998. The case concerned the protection of the new identities of individuals who had committed notorious crimes as children, and whose safety would be jeopardised if their new identities became publicly known. An injunction preventing the publication of information about the claimants had been granted at the time of their trial, when they remained children. The matter returned to the court after they attained the age of majority and applied for the ban on publication to be continued, on the basis that the information in question was confidential. The injunction was granted against named newspaper publishers and, expressly, against all the world. It was therefore an injunction granted, as against all potential targets other than the named newspaper publishers, on a without notice application. 33. Dame Elizabeth Butler-Sloss P held that the jurisdiction to grant an injunction in the circumstances of the case lay in equity, in order to restrain a breach of confidence. She recognised that by granting an injunction against all the world she would be departing from the general principle, referred to at para 26 above, that “you cannot have an injunction except against a party to the suit” (para 98). But she relied (at para 29) upon the passage in Spry (in an earlier edition) which we cited at para 17 above as the source of the necessary equitable jurisdiction, and she felt compelled to make the order against all the world because of the extreme danger that disclosure of confidential information would risk infringing the human rights of the claimants, particularly the right to life, which the court as a public authority was duty-bound to protect from the criminal acts of others: see paras 98-100. Furthermore, an order against only a few named newspaper publishers which left the rest of the media free to report the prohibited information would be positively unfair to them, having regard to their own Convention rights to freedom of speech.
(iv) Reporting restrictions
34. Reporting restrictions are prohibitions on the publication of information about court proceedings, directed at the world at large. They are not injunctions in the same sense as the orders which are our primary concern, but they are relevant as further
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