Getting Away with Murder: The Impunity Record
Editor’s Note: Since 2014, the United Nations and press freedom groups have marked November 2 as International Day to End Impunity, to spotlight the glaring number of unresolved journalists’ murders and the lack of punishment for their perpetrators around the world. This year’s awareness campaign is aptly titled “My Killers Are Still Free.” More than 25 events are taking place to encourage stronger monitoring and and responses to these crimes. As part of a series to mark the occasion, GIJN is publishing the following excerpt from UNESCO’s just-released report, The Safety of Journalists and the Danger of Impunity.
Our excerpt today makes for a chilling read — it is from the report’s annex and is simply a list of the status of judicial inquiries into journalist killings from 2006 to 2015. Out of 827 journalists killed in the past decade, only 63 have been resolved. That’s less than eight percent. The message right now is clear: opponents of a free press can literally get away with murder. Until we fix the problem of impunity, it will be impossible to meet the UN development goal of ensuring public access to information.
Annex 1: Status of the judicial inquiries of journalists killed in the last decade (2006 – 2015), organized by country in which the journalist was killed.
Click on the image below to access the original document.
pg. 31
pg. 32 & 33
pg. 34-36
pg. 37-42
pg. 43-51
The status of the judicial inquiries is also available in an interactive map.
Excerpted from The Safety of Journalists and the Danger of Impunity report by UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova to the Intergovernmental Council of The International Programme for the Development of Communication (IPDC).
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