by David Kavanagh

Reporters without Borders (RSF), the international association that advocates for press freedom and protection, recently launched a call for the UN to step up its game safeguarding journalists and media workers around the world.

The not-for-profit argued for the creation of a new position called the Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary General for the Safety of Journalists which could be used to monitor UN member states and ensure their compliance regarding press safety under international law.

This comes in the wake of a steady and disturbing increase in the amount of crimes and illegal actions taken against journalists in a litany of countries around the world and a general decrease in freedom of information.

Marking November 2nd as the International Day to End Impunity for Crimes against Journalists, UNESCO noted that in the past decade around 700 journalists have been killed while or for reporting the news.

This averages out to about one person killed per week since 2005/ 2006.

Furthermore and equally upsetting, in about nine out of ten cases, those responsible for these murders have gone largely unpunished.

In an August 2015 report, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, recalled the recent heavily publicised beheadings of James Foley, Steven Sotloff and Kenji Goto in Syria, as well as the eight Charlie Hebdo journalists that were murdered in their offices in Paris in January.

“I am deeply concerned about the failure to reduce the frequency and the scale of targeted violence that journalists face and the near absolute impunity for such crimes,” he wrote.

While these particular cases are widely known, a majority of journalists killed are rarely mentioned in the international press.

In the past decade, while 6% of journalists killed were foreign correspondents like Foley and Sotloff, 94% were locals operating in their country of origin.

These harrowing realities exist in tandem with a general deterioration of freedom of information around the world.

According to the 2015 World Press Freedom Index, about two-thirds of the 180 nation states monitored across all continents performed worse this year than in 2014.

The formation of this new position at the UN will hopefully be the first of many steps towards greater protection of the safety of journalists and media workers and, by extension, press freedom.

For more information about issues affecting journalists, visit the Committee to Protect Journalists.

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