Haiti, Israel most likely to let journalists’ murders go unpunished, CPJ 2024 impunity index shows

An overwhelming lack of justice for murdered journalists is a major threat to press freedom. More than a decade after the United Nations declared an International Day to End Impunity for Crimes against Journalists – and more than 30 years after CPJ began documenting these killings – nearly 80% remain unsolved. A CPJ report.

Two small nations – Haiti and Israel – are now the world’s biggest offenders in letting journalists’ murderers go unpunished, according to CPJ’s 2024 Global Impunity Index, which measures unsolved murders in proportion to a country’s population. This year is the first time Israel has appeared in CPJ’s index since its inception in 2008.

In Haiti, ranked No. 1, a weak-to-nonexistent judiciary, gang violence, poverty, and political instability have contributed to the failure to hold killers to account. Haiti joined the index for the first time in 2023, in third place, as criminal gangs took over large parts of the country following the 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse, plunging the press into an “existential crisis” that has forced many to cut staff or close altogether.

Israel’s targeted killing of journalists in Gaza and Lebanon during a relentless war drove it up to the No. 2 spot on this year’s index, which covers the period from September 1, 2014, to August 31, 2024. CPJ has documented the murder of five journalists – four Palestinian and one Lebanese – since the war began, and is investigating the possible targeted murders of 10 more journalists. Given the challenges of documenting the war, the number may be far higher. Overall, Israel has killed a record number of Palestinian journalists since the war began on October 7, 2023.

Mourners carry the body of Al Jazeera Arabic journalist Ismail Al Ghoul, killed along with camera operator Rami Al Refee in an Israeli drone strike on July 31, 2024.

(Photo: AFP Omar Al-Qattaa) 

Because CPJ’s impunity index measures the number of unsolved journalist murders as a percentage of each country’s population, Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory’s larger population puts it behind Haiti on a proportional basis, even though it has more cases. Only nations with five or more unsolved murders are included in the index. Israel was not included in last year’s index because the war in Gaza started after the index cutoff date of August 31, 2023. See more on the index methodology here.

Globally, CPJ’s index found that the vast majority – 77% – of journalists’ murderers have escaped with full impunity, meaning no one has been held to account for their murders, so they remain unsolved. That’s an improvement from the 90% rate CPJ recorded a decade ago and slightly better than the 78% CPJ documented in 2023, but certainly no reason for celebration. Impunity has become entrenched around the world, with about four out of five killers of journalists consistently going unpunished.

While Haiti and Israel have overtaken long-time occupants of the top spots on the impunity index, that does not mean that other offenders have improved their bleak record in achieving justice for journalists. 

Somalia, Syria, and South Sudan round out the top five worst offenders of 2024. All three have appeared on CPJ’s index for at least a decade; Somalia is one of six countries that have been included in all 17 years of the index’s existence, underscoring the persistent nature of impunity.

Entrenched impunity, even in democracies

The countries are spread across continents, but all on the index suffer from one or more of the corrosive factors that allow journalists’ killers to evade justice: wars, insurgencies, authoritarian governments, criminal gangs, and a lack of political and judicial action. The effect on press freedom is pernicious. The longer these conditions last, the more likely it is for impunity to become entrenched and for journalists to be forced to flee their home countries, self-censor, or abandon their profession entirely.

Democracies are not immune to this disturbing trend.

Mexico recorded the highest overall number of unpunished murders of journalists – 21 – during the index period and ranks eighth on the index because of its sizable population. Long one of the world’s most dangerous countries for the media, Mexico reported a rise in deadly violence in 2024 after dropping from record levels in 2022. A joint report by CPJ and Amnesty International found that the Mexican government’s failure to adequately address the shortcomings of the federal Mechanism for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders and Journalists limits its capacity to prevent violence against reporters. Rampant corruption and organized crime often make it difficult to determine whether a journalist was directly targeted for their work. 

In Brazil, which has had a democratic system since the 1980s, corruption and censorship remain pervasive, contributing to the deaths of 10 journalists in the index period. Most of the cases occurred outside major urban centers and involved journalists from small local media outlets (5), radio stations (3), and freelancers (2). Impunity is extensive; even cases with international repercussions, such as the 2022 murder of Dom Phillips in the Brazilian Amazon, remain unsolved. Three defendants have been arrested and are due to stand trial. The alleged mastermind has also been arrested, but justice has yet to be served.

CPJ 2024 Global Impunity Index rankings

Many other nations on the index have consistently seen journalists’ killers get away with murder, including:

• Pakistan has appeared on the impunity index every year since it began in 2008. Improper evidence collection, limited resources, political interference, and corruption have repeatedly resulted in ineffective investigations and prosecutions for journalist killings. CPJ has confirmed that at least two Pakistani journalists were killed in direct retaliation for their work so far in 2024, and is investigating four other possible work-related killings.

• The Philippines, also on the index every year since 2008 and frequently in the No. 1 or No. 2 spot, has logged an unsolved murder of a journalist almost every year since 1992. Full justice remains elusive for the 32 reporters and media workers killed in the Maguindanao massacre 15 years ago – one of the deadliest attacks on the press – as well as journalists like Gerry Ortega, a radio broadcaster killed in 2011. 

• Iraq ended its six-year hiatus in work-related murders in 2024 with the targeting of two women journalists. Islamic State (IS) militants and Turkish anti-Kurdish forces were behind most of the 11 murders in the index period. A 2024 CPJ report to the United Nations noted that crimes against journalists are rarely investigated, which has fueled continuing attacks on the press. As the violence ticks up, media restrictions, censorship, and threats against journalists – both in Baghdad and in Iraqi Kurdistan – continue apace.

• Afghanistan has recorded 18 journalists murdered in the last decade, with the militant Islamic State claiming responsibility for 13 deaths, most notably in a 2018 double suicide bombing. The Taliban, despite its opposition to the IS, has not pursued justice for those killed and continues to harass, attack, and detain journalists and ban news outlets.

• India has been on the index every year since its inception, with crime playing a predominant role in the 19 journalist murders over the past decade. The victims were targeted for reporting on various topics, from politics to the environment. The latest murder occurred during India’s national elections this year, which also saw fresh election violence and new legislation likely to stifle press freedom.

Like Haiti and Israel, Myanmar is a newer arrival to the index, making its first appearance in 2022. The number of journalists murdered with impunity in Myanmar climbed to eight, with three new cases documented in 2024. The surge in killings comes amid a harsh crackdown on the free press, as the military has jailed dozens of journalists and banned over a dozen independent media outlets since seizing power in 2021.

Impunity is as endemic as ever

In this index period, CPJ identified 241 killings where there was clear evidence the murders were directly linked to a person’s work. Less than 4% of those murdered achieved full justice; 19% obtained partial justice, meaning some of their killers were held to account; and the remaining 77% received no justice. 

Since 1992, CPJ has classified 974 journalist killings as murder, with only 5% receiving full justice, and 79% remaining unsolved. The figures are largely unchanged this year; as are the dangers journalists face. Impunity is as endemic as ever, and the families and colleagues of murdered journalists have little chance of seeing anyone held responsible. 

Nowhere is this reality more grim than in the cases of 30 journalists whose murderers are still free more than 30 years after CPJ documented their 1992 killings.

Only cases involving complete impunity are listed in our index; those where some have been convicted, but other suspects remain free – partial impunity – are not. 

Journalists behind the numbers

Behind the calculations and classifications are the journalists, and their grieving colleagues, families, and friends. Here are just a few journalists murdered during the index period whose killers have not been held to account:

Haitian radio journalist and host Gerry Tesse, whose mutilated remains were found six days after his October 2022 disappearance, was determined by CPJ to have been murdered in retaliation for his work based on new information. Shortly before his death, Tesse went on the radio to describe a plot to have him killed by a powerful prosecutor facing corruption allegations. Tesse was a persistent and outspoken critic of corruption and abuses of power.

Sagal Salad Osman, a producer and presenter for Radio Mogadishu, was murdered by Somali assailants in 2016 in what police said was a targeted killing by the militant group Al-Shabaab. Militants have a history of targeting journalists for Radio Mogadishu and other state media, according to CPJ research. Women in public roles in particular have been targeted, the Strategic Initiative for Women in the Horn of Africa found in a 2016 report. Also a university student, Osman produced children’s programming for the radio outlet, according to a journalist who asked to remain anonymous.

The five journalists who CPJ believes were clearly and deliberately targeted as journalists by Israel are: Issam Abdallah, a Lebanese videographer for Reuters killed on October 13, 2023, Hamza Al Dahdouh and Mustafa Thuraya, killed on January 7 in their car as they returned from an assignment, and Ismail Al Ghoul, and Rami Al Refee, killed on July 31 in an Israeli drone strike. All were reporting on the war, and three of the five were wearing “Press” vests at the time they were killed.

Mexico’s Pamela Montenegro, a journalist, satirist, and YouTube influencer, was fatally shot in 2018 by two assailants at a restaurant that she and her husband owned. She was widely known by her online persona “La Nana Pelucas” (The Grandma in Wigs). Both as editor of the online El Sillón magazine and as La Nana Pelucas, Montenegro covered local politics in the beachside city of Acapulco in Guerrero State, and frequently mocked local politicians.

Pavel Sheremet, a 1998 winner of CPJ’s International Press Freedom Award, was a Belarusian-born, Russian citizen who was killed by a car bomb in 2016 in Ukraine, where he reported and hosted a radio show commenting on criminal gang activity and on police and government corruption. The year before he was murdered, Sheremet’s friends told journalists that he believed he was being followed in Kyiv, and he told Reuters in 2015 that he felt unsafe when visiting Moscow. Five suspects were named in 2019, and both Russia’s Federal Security Service  and Belarus’ KGB have been blamed for the bombing. But no one has faced trial for Sheremet’s murder.

The murders in Myanmar of reporters Htet Myat Thu, Win Htut Oo, and Myat Thu Tan in 2024 mark the worst year in the country for impunity. Seven of eight journalists murdered in the index period were killed after the 2021 coup, after which the junta jailed dozens of journalists and used broad anti-state laws to quash independent reporting.. Htet Myat Thu, a well-known journalist previously shot and arrested while reporting on an anti-coup protest, was killed in a raid on his family home, along with Win Htut Oo, a close childhood friend with the exiled Democratic Voice of Burma. Myat Thu Tan was killed in detention while being held for critical posts he made on Facebook, sources said. 

Impunity index methodology

CPJ’s Global Impunity Index calculates the number of unsolved journalist murders as a percentage of each country’s population. For this index, CPJ examined journalist murders that occurred between September 1, 2014, and August 31, 2024, and remain unsolved. Only those nations with five or more unsolved cases are included on the index. CPJ defines murder as the targeted killing of a journalist, whether premeditated or spontaneous, in direct connection to the journalist’s work. Cases are considered unsolved when no convictions have been obtained, even if suspects have been identified and are in custody. Cases in which some but not all suspects have been convicted are classified as partial impunity. Cases in which the suspected perpetrators were killed during apprehension also are categorized as partial impunity. The index only tallies murders that have been carried out with complete impunity. It does not include those for which partial justice has been achieved. Population data from the World Bank’s 2023 World Development Indicators, viewed in September 2024, were used in calculating each country’s rating. Regions within a nation that are partially controlled or occupied by that nation, such as the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, and Gaza and Israel, are included in that country’s population figures.

Editor’s note: The impunity index methodology was updated to clarify the timeframe when CPJ viewed World Bank population data.