PARIS — An overwhelming majority of killings
of journalists across the world go unpunished, a UN agency reported on
Wednesday.
“Impunity for killings of journalists remains
unacceptably high at 86 percent,” said
UNESCO, the UN cultural organization
whose brief includes media issues.
اضافة اعلان
UNESCO called for “all necessary measures to ensure
that crimes committed against journalists are properly investigated and their
perpetrators identified and convicted”.
The organization called the global immunity rate for
journalist killings “shockingly high” in a report to coincide with the
International Day to End Impunity for Crimes Against Journalists, a UN-backed
initiative.
UNESCO Director-General
Audrey Azoulay said in a
statement that “freedom of expression cannot be protected when there is such a
staggering number of unresolved cases.”
She said impunity had a “chilling effect on
investigative reporting”.
While UNESCO welcomed a 9-percentage-point drop in
the impunity rate over the past decade it said this was insufficient to stop
what it called “the spiral of violence”.
In 2020 and 2021, the period covered by the report,
of the 117 journalists murdered for doing their job, 91 were killed while off
the clock.
“Several were killed in front of family members,
including their children,” it said.
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