Globally, 122 journalists and media workers were murdered in 2024, one of the “deadliest” years for the union, mainly due to the situation in the Middle East, according to the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) this Tuesday. .
On December 10, the IFJ published an initial list for International Human Rights Day, which documented 104 murders.
Added to this are, mainly, the deaths of professionals in the Middle East and the Arab world, where the wars in Gaza and Lebanon represent 58% of all journalists killed in 2024.
Specifically, there were 64 Palestinian media professionals, 6 Lebanese and 1 Syrian.
Since the start of the war on October 7, 2023, the number of Palestinian journalists killed has increased to 147, making this country “one of the most dangerous in the history of modern journalism,” the IFJ noted.
In this sense, the Secretary General of the IFJ, Anthony Bellanger, urged the Member States of the United Nations (UN) to “take measures to guarantee the adoption of a binding Convention on the safety of journalists.”
“Such a Convention would aim to put an end to the deaths and injuries of journalists that unfortunately occur every year,” Bellanger added.
In Asia and the Pacific, the IFJ condemned the murder of seven professionals in Pakistan, five in Bangladesh, three in India, one in Cambodia and one in the Philippines.
In addition, the military regime in Myanmar continues to hunt journalists (three of them murdered this year), while in Indonesia and Kazakhstan there have been one death each.
In 2024, 10 journalists were murdered in Africa, mostly in Sudan, where 6 of them died as a result of the generals’ war, which was especially deadly.
On the other hand, two Somali journalists, one from Chad and one from the Democratic Republic of the Congo lost their lives this year.
In America, the FIP counted nine deaths, including five Mexicans, two Colombians and two Haitians.
Journalists in the region suffered threats, intimidation, kidnappings and murders, mainly for their reports on drug trafficking, which has plagued Mexico for more than two decades.
And in Europe, the war in Ukraine has claimed the lives of four journalists, compared to 13 in 2022 and four in 2023, although it remains the safest continent in the world for the sector.
To date the organization has counted 516 journalists in prison, which represents a marked increase compared to 2023 with 427 and 2022 with 375.
With 135 imprisoned journalists, China remains the world’s largest prison for media professionals, ahead of Israel (59 Palestinian journalists) and Myanmar (44).
In the Asia-Pacific region alone there are 254 journalists in prison, ahead of Europe as a whole with 142, the Middle East and Arab world with 102, Africa with 17 and Latin America with one.
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