March 2024

The Global Alliance on Media and Gender (GAMAG) joins with other international organizations in expressing our strongest support for women and men journalists in Palestine/Gaza, Israel, Ukraine, Yemen and other conflict zones. We applaud their courage and tenacity to work in the most dangerous circumstances to report what is happening in these brutal and lamentable wars.

Too many journalists have been targeted with violence, resulting in their abuse and death. The international Committee to Protect Journalists reported that by March 2024, 64 journalists had been killed in the Israeli-Hamas war, more than 50 of them Palestinians. Reporters without Borders reported that more than 100 journalists were the victims of Russian violent crimes, including disappearance and murder, in the first two years of that nation’s invasion of Ukraine.

Women and men journalists continue to cover these wars in the face of personal danger and the routine bombardment of their offices. These are international crimes punishable by international law.

Article 79 of Additional Protocol I of the Geneva Conventions, which codifies a customary rule, requires that journalists in war zones must be treated as civilians and protected as such, provided they play no part in the hostilities. Resolution 2222 approved by the UN Security Council on May 27, 2015 extends and strengthens Resolution 1738 passed in 2006, reminding all parties in an armed conflict of their obligations to respect those who work in the media and protect them against all forms of violence.

Citizens of the world over rely on regular, factual reporting on wars, but none so desperately as those who live in nations where wars are being waged. GAMAG calls on governments – especially those engaged in conflict – to assure the protection of all journalists in their midst and to respect the work that they perform.