Women account for 15% of detained journalists

Reporters without Borders (RSF) has just published its annual Round-up of journalists killed, detained, held hostage or missing.

In a new trend, women now account for nearly 15% of the detained journalists, as against only 7% five years ago. Two of the women detained in Iran, Nilufar Hamedi and Elahe Mohammadi, are facing a possible death penalty for helping to draw attention to the fate of Mahsa Amini, the young woman whose death has triggered a big wave of protests in Iran.

With 533 journalists currently detained, 2022 has set a new, sad record. After a relative respite, the number of journalists killed has also risen in 2022 – to 57. At the same, 65 journalists are now classified as held hostage and 49 as missing.

The Round-up also looks at some of the year’s most striking cases, such as that of Ivan Safronov, one of Russia’s best investigative journalists, who was sentenced to 22 years in prison, the longest jail sentence registered by RSF in 2022; and Dom Phillips, a British journalist whose dismembered body was found in a remote part of the Brazilian Amazon.

Compiled by RSF every year since 1995, the annual round-up of abusive treatment and deadly violence against journalists is based on precise data. Thanks to a network of correspondents in 130 countries and our careful monitoring, RSF are able to gather detailed information that allows us to confirm with certainty or a great deal of confidence that the death, detention, abduction or disappearance of each journalist listed was a direct result of their journalistic work.