Ignacio Miguel Delgado Culebras/CPJ Middle East and North Africa Correspondent

Ignacio Miguel Delgado Culebras has worked as a freelance journalist throughout the Middle East, writing on civil society, democratization, and human rights issues. He served as a media analyst for the Open Source Center's Europe bureau for nine years and worked as a researcher, editor, and election monitor for the Cairo-based Ibn Khaldun Center for Development Studies.

Relatives of Nahed Hattar carry signs condemning his murder during a protest in Amman in September 2016. The Jordanian commentator and writer was shot dead outside a court while on trial for blasphemy over a Facebook cartoon. (AP/Raad Adayleh)

Changes to Jordan’s hate speech law could further stifle press freedom

Recently proposed amendments to Jordan’s 2015 cybercrime law, including a vague and broad definition of hate speech, will further stifle press freedom on the pretext of protecting the country’s citizens, and could result in further self-censorship, several Jordanian journalists told CPJ.

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Members of the Popular Mobilisation Units pose with the Iraqi flag in Tal Afar. Authorities in Iraq and Syria who relied on militias to help fight Islamic State must now decide what to do with the groups. (AFP/Ahmad al-Rubaye)

Islamic State recedes but threats to journalists in Iraq and Syria remain

After three years of fighting in Iraq and Syria, the militant group Islamic State has been forced out of large swathes of territory. But local journalists and press freedom groups with whom CPJ spoke said that the defeat of Islamic State doesn’t necessarily mean that journalists will be any safer.

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Iraqis flee their Mosul homes during fighting in May. Local journalists say they went into hiding to survive during the takeover by Islamic State militants. (AFP/Ahmad Al-Rubaye)

For Mosul journalists, no work or safety in post-Islamic State Iraq

For nearly three years, Mosul journalist Mohammad Talal al-Nuaimi lived in constant fear of being discovered and killed. The seizure of Mosul by the militant group Islamic State, or IS, in early June 2014 and the subsequent targeting of local journalists had forced him into hiding. He was unable to do any media-related work under…

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