International Day to End Impunity for Crimes Against Journalists 2025: Confronting Digital Threats and Upholding Press Freedom
The International Day to End Impunity for Crimes Against Journalists, observed every November 2nd, is a United Nations-recognized day to condemn the attacks and violence faced by media professionals and to urge Member States to implement measures to combat the prevailing culture of impunity. Established by UN General Assembly Resolution A/RES/68/163 in 2013, the date was chosen to commemorate the assassination of two French journalists, Ghislaine Dupont and Claude Verlon, in Mali on that same day. The observance responds to alarming global statistics: between 2006 and 2025, over 1,800 journalists have been killed for bringing information to the public, and in roughly nine out of ten of these cases, the perpetrators have never been brought to justice. This high rate of impunity not only represents a failure of legal systems but also emboldens those who would use violence to silence scrutiny, thereby covering up serious human rights abuses, corruption, and crime, and ultimately damaging the fabric of societies. The day serves as a global call to action for all stakeholders—governments, civil society, the media, and the public—to demand accountability, protect press freedom, and ensure that journalists can perform their work independently and without undue interference.
The theme for the 2025 commemoration, “Chat GBV: Raising Awareness on AI-facilitated Gender-Based Violence against Women Journalists,” marks a significant evolution in the understanding of threats against the press. It highlights that the dangers for journalists are not confined to physical violence but have expanded aggressively into the digital realm . This theme focuses specifically on the gendered and technology-facilitated threats that disproportionately target women journalists. As the United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres emphasized in his 2025 message, there is an "alarming rise in online abuse targeting women journalists, which goes largely unpunished and leads frequently to real-world harm." This year's observance is a direct response to the fact that digital transformation, while creating new opportunities for expression, has also given rise to unprecedented risks, with women in public-facing roles like journalism being particularly impacted.
The Pervasive Threat of Technology-Facilitated Gender-Based Violence
The 2025 theme, "Chat GBV," is a call to action to tackle Gender-Based Violence (GBV) facilitated by digital technology. It acknowledges that women journalists are increasingly targeted by AI-driven threats, including the spread of gendered disinformation, surveillance, deepfakes, and other forms of online harassment. This emerging issue, collectively known as technology-facilitated gender-based violence (TFGBV), has become alarmingly prevalent with the rise of generative artificial intelligence. The consequences are severe and extend far beyond the digital screen. According to UNESCO’s discussion paper, The Chilling, 73 percent of the women journalists surveyed reported having been threatened, intimidated, and insulted online in connection with their work. Perhaps even more chilling is the finding that one in four of these women journalists were later subjected to offline attacks, illustrating a direct and dangerous link between online violence and physical harm.
Field research from around the globe confirms these alarming trends. In Zimbabwe, 63% of surveyed women journalists reported experiencing TFGBV, while in Ukraine, a staggering 81% said they had faced gendered online violence, including defamation, trolling, and threats that sometimes extended to their family members . These attacks have a clear "chilling effect," not just on the individual journalists but on freedom of expression more broadly. When women journalists are forced into self-censorship or driven out of the profession by unrelenting abuse, society loses vital perspectives and the public's right to information is severely diminished. The 2025 commemoration seeks to mobilize all stakeholders—from governments and tech companies to media institutions and civil society—to confront this issue through policy advocacy, public awareness campaigns, and by making digital platforms safer for those who gather and report the news.
The Enduring Crisis of Physical Violence and Judicial Impunity
While the 2025 theme rightly focuses on emerging digital threats, the ongoing physical dangers and the persistent, shocking rate of impunity for lethal attacks against journalists remain at the core of the day's concerns. The statistics are a sobering reminder of the ultimate price paid for truth-telling. According to UNESCO data, 162 journalists were killed in the line of duty in 2023-2024 alone . The global impunity rate for these killings remains shockingly high at 85% to 90%, meaning that in the vast majority of cases, the murderers of journalists face no legal consequences. This impunity perpetuates a vicious cycle; it emboldens the perpetrators of crimes and, at the same time, has a chilling effect on other journalists and society as a whole.
The geography of this violence is also telling. Latin America and the Caribbean continue to be the region with the highest number of murders of journalists, according to the UNESCO Director-General’s Report . Furthermore, almost half of the journalist deaths in recent years took place in countries experiencing armed conflict. The year 2025 has seen particularly devastating losses in war zones. According to the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), since the beginning of 2025, at least 99 journalists and media workers have been killed in the course of their work, with the majority occurring in conflict areas: 50 in Gaza, Palestine; 8 in Ukraine; and 6 in Sudan. As highlighted in a joint statement by the European Union's High Representative Josep Borrell and Vice-President VÄ›ra Jourová, "Gaza has been the deadliest place for journalists in any conflict," and they strongly condemned the "unprecedented rise in killings of journalists over the last year" as "devastating and unacceptable." These figures underscore the extreme risks journalists take to report from crisis zones and the urgent need for all parties in conflicts to respect international humanitarian law, which clearly states that journalists are civilians and must be protected at all times.
The United Nations Plan of Action and Global Advocacy
The International Day to End Impunity for Crimes against Journalists is not merely a day of remembrance but is firmly rooted in a concrete framework for action: the UN Plan of Action on the Safety of Journalists and the Issue of Impunity . This plan, born from a multi-stakeholder and holistic approach, represents the first concerted effort within the UN to address attacks and impunity for crimes against journalists by bringing together UN bodies, national authorities, media, and civil society organizations. Since its adoption, the plan has contributed to higher visibility for journalist safety within the UN system, leading to an increasing number of resolutions and declarations on the matter. It has also been instrumental in building international coalitions and fostering tangible changes on the ground, such as the creation of national safety mechanisms for journalists in at least 50 countries. The protection of journalists is also explicitly recognized as part of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, particularly under Goal 16, which promotes peace, justice, and strong institutions.
The 2025 observance aligns with the objectives of this plan by pushing for its implementation in the context of new digital challenges. It reinforces the call for governments, media institutions, and digital platforms to take concrete steps toward accountability and protection . This includes investigating every case of violence, prosecuting every perpetrator, and ensuring that journalists can do their jobs freely and safely everywhere. The day serves as a unique platform to sensitize the public and foster constructive dialogue among all actors involved in the fight against impunity, from international organizations to local grassroots advocates.
A Day of Global and Local Commemoration in 2025
The format of the 2025 commemoration is distinct. Unlike previous years that featured a central global conference, UNESCO has encouraged its partners and networks to organize national-level events and activities for IDEI 2025 . This decentralized approach allows local stakeholders to invest their energies into contextualizing the thematic issues of crimes against journalists and impunity for their own settings, thereby fostering greater local ownership and visibility. Around the world, one can expect to see a range of activities such as safety workshops for journalists, webinars and panel discussions with legal experts and human rights advocates, memorial exhibitions honoring fallen journalists, and the dissemination of online resources and advocacy tools. These events aim not only to honor those who have lost their lives in the pursuit of truth but also to serve as a powerful call to action to ensure that journalists can work safely and without fear, as their role is essential for the health of any society.
The International Day to End Impunity for Crimes Against Journalists in 2025 presents a critical juncture in the global defense of press freedom. It powerfully connects the enduring, brutal reality of physical violence and judicial impunity with the urgent, escalating crisis of technology-facilitated gender-based violence. By focusing on the theme "Chat GBV," the 2025 observance sounds the alarm on the insidious ways that artificial intelligence and digital platforms are being weaponized to silence and intimidate women journalists, thereby threatening to erase their voices from public discourse. This day demands a unified and vigorous response from the international community. It calls upon governments to fulfill their duty to investigate and prosecute all crimes against media professionals, upon technology companies to ensure their platforms are not tools of abuse, upon media institutions to robustly protect their staff, and upon the public to stand in solidarity with a free and fearless press. As UN Secretary-General António Guterres solemnly reminded us, "When journalists are silenced, we all lose our voice."On November 2nd, and every day, the world is called upon to defend the voices that bring us truth.
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