The number of journalists imprisoned around the world hit a new record of 533 in 2022, up from 488 last year, according to a Reporters Without Borders (RSF) report published Wednesday.
A total of 57 journalists were killed during the year, due in part to the war in Ukraine, up from “historic lows” of 48 and 50 in the last two years, respectively.
United Nations agency earlier reported that an overwhelming majority of killings of journalists across the world go unpunished.
“Impunity for killings of journalists remains unacceptably high at 86 percent,” said UNESCO, the United Nations cultural organisation whose brief includes media issues.
UNESCO called for “all necessary measures to ensure that crimes committed against journalists are properly investigated and their perpetrators identified and convicted.”
The organisation 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”.
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”.
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