“In 2022 and 2023, a journalist has been killed every four days simply for doing their essential work of seeking the truth. In the majority of cases, no one will ever be held responsible for these murders,” declared the director general of the UN organization, Audrey Azoulay, quoted in the report.
85% of the murders of journalists recorded by UNESCO since 2006 are considered unsolved, the report indicates. Faced with this very high “rate of impunity”, UNESCO calls on States to “considerably increase their efforts”.
During the two years covered by the UNESCO report (2022-2023), 162 journalists were killed, almost half of them working in countries experiencing armed conflict.
In 2022, the country with the highest number of crimes was Mexico, with 19 cases. Just before Ukraine where the assassination of 11 journalists was recorded that year.
In 2023, “it is in the State of Palestine that the greatest number of murders were recorded: 24 journalists were killed there”, points out the report. Palestine was admitted as a full member of the Unesco in 2011.
The report generally notes an “increase in the number of murders in countries in conflict”. Local journalists “represented 86% of murders linked to conflict coverage,” estimates UNESCO.
Furthermore, the organization specifies that “journalists continue to be killed in their homes or near their homes, which exposes their families to great risks.”
In other geographical areas, most of the journalists killed covered “organized crime, corruption” or were killed “while reporting on demonstrations,” adds Unesco.
More than in previous years, women journalists were particularly targeted by these murders in 2022. The organization recorded ten murders of women journalists during this year alone.
Among the victims, Mexican journalist Maria Guadalupe Lourdes Maldonado López, shot dead on the border between Mexico and the United States. Or the Palestinian journalist Shirine Abu Akleh, killed during an Israeli raid while covering clashes in the occupied West Bank.
