The 12 countries where the murder of a journalist is most likely to go unpunished are: Syria, Somalia, Haiti, South Sudan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Mexico, Philippines, Myanmar, Brazil, Pakistan and India.
This statement was originally published on cpj.org on 31 October 2023.
The persistent lack of justice for murdered reporters is a major threat to press freedom. Ten years after the United Nations declared an international day to end impunity for crimes against journalists – and more than 30 years after CPJ began documenting these killings – almost 80% of their killings remain unsolved. A CPJ report.
Crisis-hit Haiti has emerged as one of the countries where murderers of journalists are most likely to go free, the Committee to Protect Journalists’ 2023 Global Impunity Index has found. A devastating combination of gang violence, chronic poverty, political instability, and a dysfunctional judiciary are behind the Caribbean country’s first inclusion on CPJ’s annual list of nations where killers get away with murder.
Haiti now ranks as the world’s third-worst impunity offender, behind Syria and Somalia respectively. Somalia, along with Iraq, Mexico, the Philippines, Pakistan, and India, have been on the index every year since its inception. Syria, South Sudan, Afghanistan, and Brazil also have been there for years – a sobering reminder of the persistent and pernicious nature of impunity.
The reasons for these countries’ failure to prosecute journalists’ killers range from conflict to corruption, insurgency to inadequate law enforcement, and lack of political interest in punishing those willing to kill independent journalists. These states include democracies and autocracies, nations in turmoil and those with stable governments. Some are emerging from years of war, but a slowdown of hostilities has not ended their persecution of journalists. And as impunity becomes entrenched, it signals an indifference likely to embolden future killers and shrink independent reporting as alarmed journalists either flee their countries, dial back on their reporting, or leave the profession entirely.
This year’s index documents 261 journalists murdered in connection with their work between September 1, 2013 – the year the United Nations declared November 2 as the International Day to End Impunity for Crimes Against Journalists – and August 31, 2023. It finds that during this 10-year period, no-one has been held to account in 204 – more than 78% – of these cases.
(Journalists killed in the Israel-Hamas war that began on October 7 are not included here because their deaths fall outside of the 10-year index period.)
A 78% impunity rate is a slight improvement on the 90% rate CPJ recorded a decade ago. But it should not be seen as reason for optimism. Impunity remains rampant and the stark reality is that nearly four out of every five killers of journalists are still getting away with murder.
Overall, CPJ has recorded the murders of 956 journalists in connection with their work since it began tracking them in 1992. A total of 757 – more than 79%– have gone wholly unprosecuted.
CPJ’s impunity index includes countries with at least five unsolved murders during a 10-year span. Only cases involving full impunity are listed; those where some have been convicted, but other suspects remain free – partial impunity – are not. Each country’s ranking is calculated as a proportion of their population size, meaning more populous countries like Mexico and India are lower on the list, in spite of having a higher number of journalist murders.
But the pernicious effects of impunity extend beyond the countries that have become fixtures on CPJ’s annual index. Unpunished murders have an intimidating effect on local journalists everywhere, corroding press freedom and shrinking public-interest reporting.
In the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Palestinian journalists interviewed by CPJ for the “Deadly Pattern” report published earlier this year said their coverage had been undermined by escalating fears for their safety after the Israel Defense Forces fatally shot Al-Jazeera Arabic correspondent Shireen Abu Akleh in May 2022. CPJ’s investigation found that no-one had been held accountable for the deaths of 20 journalists by Israeli military fire in 22 years. “The impunity in these cases has severely undermined the freedom of the press, leaving the rights of journalists in precarity,” noted the report. (Israel is not listed in the impunity index because fewer than five journalists killed during the index period are classified as having been targeted for murder.)
In several countries in the European Union, typically considered the safest places for journalists, press freedom has come under increasing pressure, with journalist murders remaining unsolved in Malta, Slovakia, Greece, and the Netherlands.
In Malta and Slovakia, full justice in the killings of Daphne Caruana Galizia and Ján Kuciak is yet to be achieved. Greece has yet to hold anyone accountable for the 2010 killing of Sokratis Giolias, with a recent report by “A Safer World for the Truth” – a collaboration of rights groups that includes CPJ – finding gaps in authorities’ investigations into the murder of Giolias and the similar killing of Giorgos Karaivaz 11 years later.
The stark reality is that nearly four out of every five killers of journalists are still getting away with murder.
In the Netherlands, nine suspects are awaiting trial for the fatal shooting of Dutch reporter Peter R. de Vries as he left a TV studio in 2021. While it remains unclear whether De Vries and Karaivaz were targeted because of their work, colleagues in Greece and Holland have told CPJ their deaths have left lingering insecurity and self-censorship in the media community. De Vries’ death had “a chilling effect on journalists,” Dutch crime reporter Paul Vugts – the Netherlands’ first journalist to receive full police protection because of work-related death threats – told CPJ.
In countries considered less safe for journalists, violent retaliation for their coverage also continues.
In the central African nation of Cameroon, the mutilated corpse of journalist Martinez Zogo was found on January 22, 2023. At least one other journalist with ties to Zogo, Jean-Jacques Ola Bebe, was found dead 12 days later. Several journalists warned by Zogo that they too were on a hit list have fled the country; others opted for self-censorship. “The killing, physical attacks, abduction, torture, and harassment of journalists by Cameroonian police, intelligence agencies, military, and non-state actors continue to have a severe chilling effect [on the media],” noted a July report submitted to the United Nations by a group that included CPJ.
Hard path to justice
Since 1992, full justice has only been achieved for 47 murdered journalists – fewer than 5%. CPJ’s data shows that factors like international pressure, universal jurisdiction, and changes in government can play instrumental roles in securing that punishment.
One landmark case: Peruvian journalist Hugo Bustíos Saavedra. Bustios was killed in an army ambush on November 24, 1988, while covering the conflict between government forces and Shining Path guerrillas. It took almost 35 years for a Peruvian criminal court to sentence Daniel Urresti Elera, then the army’s intelligence chief in the zone where Bustios was killed, to 12 years in prison for his part in the killing. (Explore a timeline of the Bustios case here.)
Urresti’s conviction resulted from a combination of changing internal politics in Peruvian leadership, the re-opening of investigations into human rights cases after Peru’s Supreme Court effectively struck down the 1995 amnesty law protecting military officers, and ongoing advocacy by rights groups – including CPJ – at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.
In the Central African Republic, the August death of Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of the Russian private mercenary group killed in a plane crash two months after ordering his troops to march on Moscow, has led to hopes that those with information about the 2018 murders of three Russian journalists might come forward, writes CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia Program Coordinator Gulnoza Said. The journalists, Orkhan Dzhemal, Kirill Radchenko and Aleksandr Rastorguyev, were shot dead three days after arriving in the country to investigate Wagner’s activities there.
Unpunished murders have an intimidating effect on local journalists everywhere, corroding press freedom and shrinking public-interest reporting.
Universal jurisdiction, which allows a country to prosecute crimes against humanity regardless of where they were committed, can also be an effective tool. Bai Lowe, accused of being a member of the “Junglers” death squad that killed Gambian journalist Deyda Hydara, is on trial in Germany – the first person accused of human rights violations during the dictatorship of Yahya Jammeh to be tried outside Gambia.
International pressure is another factor that may prompt authorities to investigate unsolved killers – even if the probes don’t necessarily lead to prosecution. CPJ’s “Deadly Pattern” report about journalists killed by the Israeli military found that authorities were more likely to investigate killings of journalists with foreign passports. “The degree to which Israel investigates, or claims to investigate, journalist killings appears to be related to external pressure,” noted the report.
The Bustios case may have offered a glimmer of hope. But it also underscores that the road to justice can be long and tortuous – and for the vast majority of murdered journalists, it never comes at all.
