UNESCO Remembers Assassinated Journalists

This UNESCO webpage is dedicated to journalists who were assassinated in the exercise of their profession. It remembers their contribution to freedom of expression, democracy and peace.

UNESCO is the only United Nations agency with a mandate to defend freedom of expression and freedom of the press. Article 1 of its Constitution requires the Organization to "further universal respect for justice, for the rule of law and for the human rights and fundamental freedoms which are affirmed for the peoples of the world, without distinction of race, sex, language or religion, by the Charter of the United Nations." The Organization is further required to "collaborate in the work of advancing the mutual knowledge and understanding of peoples, through all means of mass communication and to that end recommend such international agreements as may be necessary to promote the free flow of ideas by word and image…"

The Director General of UNESCO speaks out to protest the killing of journalists on a regular basis. Click here to see a discouragingly long list of UNESCO's protests of such killings.

Director-General condemns murder of German journalists Karen Fischer and Christian Struwe in Afghanistan