Middle East & North Africa

Nazareth, December 3, 2025 — Foreign correspondents entering Gaza under Israeli military escort describe conditions that prevent independent reporting and reinforce longstanding Committee to Protect Journalist concerns: escorted visits are not meaningful access and cannot satisfy Israel’s obligations under international law to enable independent newsgathering. Since the Israel-Gaza war began in October 2023, Israel has…

For years, Bilal Jadallah was the quiet force defending independent journalism in the Gaza Strip — a mentor, protector, and the architect of rare safe spaces for Palestinian journalists working under constant threat. When he was killed in an Israeli strike on November 19, 2023, early on in the latest Israel-Gaza war, the loss reverberated…

With settler violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank spiking, journalists are also facing more frequent and severe attacks.  So far in 2025, the Committee to Protect Journalists has documented 11 attack incidents involving at least 23 Palestinian and international journalists by Israeli settlers — some alongside soldiers — compared with one attack on…

In Sudan’s vast western region of Darfur, journalists in El-Fasher are trapped under siege, enduring violence, hunger, and relentless bombardment alongside the people whose lives they report on.  The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a group that evolved from the notorious Janjaweed militias accused of atrocities in earlier Darfur conflicts, have been fighting the Sudanese…

Tunisian lawyer and commentator Sonia Dahmani, known for her bold defense of human rights and civil liberties, has become a symbol of the country’s escalating crackdown on dissent. Arrested in May 2024, she has been subjected to five separate legal proceedings that could put her behind bars for decades under Decree 54 — a law…

Since the Israel-Gaza war began on October 7, 2023, the Committee to Protect Journalists has documented at least 174 cases of journalists injured and two cases of journalists missing. CPJ believes the true number of injured Palestinian journalists is likely higher and continues to investigate additional cases. CPJ counts the journalists’ cases it has been…

Israel’s targeted strikes on two newspaper offices in Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, which killed 31 journalists and media support workers on September 10, signal that its deadly pattern of attacking reporters and newsrooms on the grounds that they publish “terrorist” propaganda has spread firmly across the Middle East.  Yemen’s 26 September newspaper was the first to…

Iranian-American journalist Reza Valizadeh has spent more than a year imprisoned in Iran, enduring severe psychological torment and relentless interrogations for the simple fact that he is a journalist. Initially detained in Tehran’s Evin Prison, his already dire situation deteriorated significantly after a devastating Israeli attack on the facility. Valizadeh was transferred to the dangerously overcrowded and medically inadequate Fashafouyeh Prison, where extreme neglect and inhumane…

Journalists in southern Syria are being chased, detained and intimidated by live fire by members of the Israeli Defense Forces, according to reporters who spoke to the Committee to Protect Journalists. The months-long escalation of harassment raises concerns about press freedom and has sometimes forced journalists to play a dangerous game of hide-and-seek to protect…

After almost 14 years of civil war, the lightning overthrow of Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad in December has unleashed the possibility of returning home for hundreds of exiled journalists. For Ahmad Primo, who was arrested by the government for reporting that the 2011 protests were a revolution and then jailed by Islamic State, the idea…