The killings of journalists around the world climbed sharply in 2022 and 2023, according to a UNESCO report released on November 2, 2024, with the UN agency saying 162 verified deaths marked a 38% increase from the previous two-year period.
UNESCO said the toll meant a journalist was killed roughly every four days over the period. It also said the scale of accountability remains deeply limited: about 85% of cases it has tracked since 2006 are still unsolved or abandoned, despite a slight improvement from earlier snapshots of the problem.
The report, covered by DW, places much of the danger in settings where conflict already shapes daily life. More than half of the killings in 2022 and 2023 occurred in countries experiencing armed conflict, and many of the journalists died in their home countries. UNESCO said some were targeted while reporting on organized crime, corruption or protests, showing that the threat extends far beyond front lines.
The regional picture was uneven. Mexico recorded the highest number of journalist killings in 2022, with 19 cases, while the Palestinian territories recorded the highest number in 2023, with 24. UNESCO said Latin America and the Caribbean, along with Arab countries, were the most dangerous regions for journalists, while North America and Western Europe were the least dangerous, with six killings.
Women accounted for 14 of the verified deaths across the two-year period, or 9% of the total. UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay said in a statement that journalists were being killed simply for doing their work and that the crimes could not be allowed to go unpunished.
The numbers add up to a stark warning about the state of press safety worldwide. The headline figure is not just the rise in killings, but the persistence of impunity. UNESCO said the rate of unsolved cases is still so high that most families and colleagues are left without justice even after years have passed.
The report is biannual, meaning it measures the problem over a two-year cycle rather than as a daily incident count. That makes the 2022-23 increase especially notable: the agency is not describing a single crisis point, but a sustained pattern of lethal risk for reporters across conflict zones, politically volatile countries and places where criminal groups can operate with relative freedom.
For newsrooms, the report is also a reminder that the risks are often local. UNESCO said most journalists were killed in their own countries, underscoring that the danger frequently comes from the same environments they were trying to cover, not necessarily from foreign war zones alone.
