Reporters Without Borders (RSF), a France-based media rights organization, has revealed in a report that around 1,668 journalists have been killed in the past 20 years (2003-2022), an average of 80 journalists killed every year.
According to RSF, 93 journalists have been killed in Pakistan since 2003, making it the fifth most dangerous country in the world for journalists.
Iraq and Syria have been the deadliest countries for journalists in the past two decades, and a total of 578 journalists have been killed, representing a third of the total number of journalists in the world. It is followed by Mexico with 125 murders, followed by the Philippines with 107, followed by Pakistan, Afghanistan and Somalia with 93, 81 and 25 respectively.
Furthermore, the RSF report describes the period between 2012 and 2013 as the “darkest years”, as 286 journalists were killed because of the war in Syria.
However, the organization noted that even war-free areas are not necessarily safe for journalists, as more have been killed in peace zones than in war zones.