Palestinians use a horse-drawn cart to transport their belongings as they walk past a levelled building in Gaza City on November 2, 2024, amid the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas militants. - AFP
AMMAN (Bernama-Petra): The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) said Saturday that a vast majority of crimes of journalists being killed in the world went unpunished, the Jordan News Agency (Petra) reported.
In a report on the International Day to End Impunity for Crimes against Journalists, UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay said that in 2022 and 2023, a journalist was killed every four days simply for doing their essential work of seeking the truth, adding that in most cases no one will ever be held to account for these murders.
She said 85 percent of the killings of journalists documented by UNESCO since 2006 remained unsolved, with the State of Palestine recording the highest number of killings of journalists in 2023.
In a message on the occasion, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres pointed to an alarming rate of journalists being killed in conflict zones in recent years, particularly in Gaza, which has seen the highest number of killings of journalists and media workers in any war in decades.
Guterres pointed out that the Pact for the Future, adopted in September, calls for respecting and protecting journalists, media professionals and associated personnel working in situations of armed conflict.
He urged governments to take urgent steps to protect journalists and investigate crimes committed against them and prosecute the perpetrators everywhere. - Bernama-Petra
