Lessons from Afghanistan, Iraq and Mexico
The Global Alliance on Media and Gender (GAMAG) commemorated the 2026 International Day to End Impunity for Crimes Against Journalists with the launch of a research report titled “Engendering national mechanisms for the protection of journalists in Mexico, Iraq and Afghanistan.”
The research objective was to analyze institutional mechanisms to address specific conditions and needs faced by women journalists. Implemented in Afghanistan, Iraq and Mexico, the study assessed the gender responsiveness of the respective national mechanisms and/or initiatives for the protection of journalists, and analyzed violence against women journalists, including responses to attacks. The study proposed recommendations and global indicators to evaluate the gender sensitiveness of such mechanisms.
Key findings
Presented by Dr. Aimée Vega Montiel (research overall coordinator, report editor & principal investigator, Mexico), Lucía Lagunes Huerta (co-investigator, Mexico) and Ruchi Kumar (principal investigator, Afghanistan)
Mexico
Women journalists face physical, psychological, economic, and sexual violence, as well as femicides. Institutional violence ranks highest among modalities, followed closely by digital violence (doxxing, hate speech, stalking, surveillance, and rape threats).
Established under law in 2012, the Mexican protection mechanism operates three units: Case Reception/Rapid Reaction, Risk Evaluation, and Protection Follow-up/Analysis. Risk analysis protocols betray gender-blindness and sexist bias, treating threats to women and men reporters identically. Only sexual assault is classified as unique to women while ignoring online violence and family care needs during forced displacement. In October 2021, the Congress eliminated the dedicated trust fund supporting the mechanism, severely eroding operational capacity. Hostile public statements during daily presidential press briefings have further escalated risk conditions for investigative reporters.
The Mexican government’s recent cancellation of its contract with the private company executing protection measures placed the private data of approximately 2000 protected individuals at risk and has left administrative units unstaffed. The murder of protected journalist Roxanna Guzman is an outcome of this decision.
Iraq (highlight presented on behalf of the principal investigator Basma El Madi)
Women journalists face threats from armed groups, political factions, and security forces. While up to 65% experience workplace or field harassment, 98% shy away from reporting threats to police due to state corruption, retaliation fears, and social stigma.
Designated as a UN Plan of Action pilot country in 2013, Iraq established its National Committee on the Safety of Journalists in 2016 and launched its official operational protection mechanism in 2019. In 2020, 12 female police officers were assigned to the Special Investigative Unit to facilitate complaint filing by female journalists. Governance remained heavily male-dominated, with women holding only 3 out of 14 seats on the national committee board at the time of the research.
Afghanistan
Pre-2021 baseline: A survey of 135 female journalists across 25 provinces carried out in August 2021 before the Taliban capture of Kabul revealed that less than 10% experienced physical violence and 5% sexual violence. Approximately 30% suffered psychological violence in newsrooms. Over 50% of survivors did not report incidents due to ineffective mechanisms or career retaliation fears. In one documented case, a female reporter filing a sexual assault complaint against a supervisor was counter-charged with “moral crimes” by local police.
In Post-Taliban Afghanistan, women are banned from secondary and university education (above age 12), forbidden from traveling beyond 70 km without a male guardian (Mahram), and barred from showing their faces or broadcasting their voices on radio/TV in multiple provinces. Over 50% of Afghan newsrooms have shut down, and female media staff has dropped by over 80% (from an estimated 2,800 to fewer than 240 active women reporters). More than 200 Afghan women journalists fled the country, some establishing exile news outlets. Zan Times for instance trains and publishes work by female journalists reporting anonymously from inside Afghanistan.
Expert panel discussion
GAMAG Board Adviser and UNESCO-IPDC Rapporteur Albana Shala addressed the fundamental dilemma of national safety mechanisms when state institutions themselves are perpetrators of violence against journalists. She highlighted varying country contexts: Systemic exclusion and silencing of women in Afghanistan, a mix of state involvement, armed groups, and criminal bands in Mexico, while in Iraq, a climate of political pressure and institutional fragmentation. She argued that evaluating protection mechanisms requires looking beyond their existence or written gender protocols to assess how independent, accessible, and capable they are of acting against actual perpetrators. Albana emphasized that in conflict zones, state involvement further complicates implementation, severely limiting the practical protection mechanisms can afford.
Jennifer Moreau, International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) Vice President and Unifor national representative (Canada), noted that many nations lack national protection mechanisms, while existing ones often fail due to a lack of political will or failure to apply a gender-sensitive lens to the empirical evidence on threats. She outlined essential components for effective protection mechanisms: Information gathering or hotlines, psychological and emotional support, and credible threat assessment twinned with individual safety planning. Jennifer called for international cooperation to offer safe havens abroad for female reporters when home states cannot or will not protect them. She emphasized that attacks on female journalists are direct assaults on democratic institutions and the public’s right to know, driven by an accelerating global wave of misogynistic and authoritarian politics. Jennifer highlighted several measures within the mandate of trade unions, including negotiating collective bargaining clauses in employment contracts to hold media employers accountable for journalists’ safety. She invited academic researchers to reach out to the IFJ for collaboration on newsroom surveys and field access.
UNESCO-IPDC Deputy Secretary Saorla McCabe highlighted that impunity remains high globally, with increased killings of journalists in conflict zones, where almost all female journalists killed in recent years lost their lives. She cited recent UNESCO-UN Women research showing that three quarters of surveyed female journalists reported having suffered online violence, with offline physical spillover increasing from 20% in 2020 to 42% in 2025. She spoke on the progress made in implementing the UN Plan of Action for the Safety of Journalists and the Issue of Impunity. National repositories incorporating gender dimensions have been created in various countries. Saorla urged civil society and academia to develop standardized methodologies to track digital gender-based violence, gendered disinformation, and AI-driven threats, to monitor the performance of national safety mechanisms, to advocate for tech platform accountability and data transparency, and, to build early warning networks and practical safety guidance for newsrooms.
The research was implemented with funding from UNESCO’s International Programme for Development Cooperation (IPDC).
GAMAG General Secretary Dr. Sarah Macharia moderated the discussion.
About the speakers
(in alphabetical order)
Aimee Vega Montiel is a feminist media scholar, chair of GAMAG and researcher at the National Autonomous University of Mexico UNAM. She is the Engendering National Mechanisms research overall coordinator, report editor and principal investigator of the Mexico case study. She is co-chair of the UNESCO UNITWIN University Network on Gender, Media and ICT.
Albana Shala is an adviser to GAMAG’s board the International Steering Committee and UNESCO-IPDC rapporteur. She has worked across the Balkans, Caucasus, Central America, and Southeast Asia building programs that protect journalists, promote gender equality, and support independent media in fragile environments. Among other key roles, Albana formerly chaired UNESCO-IPDC on behalf of the Netherlands.
Jennifer Moreau is vice-president of the International Federation of Journalists and national representative at Unifor, Canada’s largest private sector union. Jennifer is a former newspaper reporter who has spent her career defending media workers’ rights with Unifor.
Lucía Lagunes Huerta is an award-winning journalist and co-researcher of the Mexico study. Lucia is a feminist sociologist who spent over two decades as director of Comunicación e Información de la Mujer A.C. (CIMAC, Mexico)
Ruchi Kumar is an award-winning independent journalist covering security and development issues in South Asia, the Middle East and Eastern Europe, as seen through a gendered lens. Her articles have been featured in the Guardian UK. She is the principal investigator of the Afghanistan case study.
Saorla McCabe is Deputy Secretary of UNESCO-IPDC and Advisor for Communication and Information Strategy and Policy at UNESCO. Saorla has over 20 years of experience working on press freedom issues, freedom of expression and journalists’ safety issues, with a particular interest in the gender dimensions of safety.
Sarah Macharia is a feminist political economist, General Secretary of GAMAG and convenor of the Global Media Monitoring Project (GMMP) expert group. Globally coordinated by WACC, the GMMP is a research and advocacy initiative for gender equality in and through the news running since 1995 in over 100 countries worldwide.
Audio recording
| Report launch audio recording. 02/11/2026 |
| (audio) Part 1. Welcome and introductions. Sarah Macharia |
| (audio) Part 2. Key findings, Mexico & Iraq. Aimée Vega Montiel |
| (audio) Part 3. Key findings, Afghanistan. Ruchi Kumar |
| (audio) Part 4. Expert panel, with: 4.1. Albana Shala, Jennifer Moreau; 4.2. Saorla McCabe; 4.3. Lucía Lagunes Huerta + open discussion. Moderator – Sarah Macharia |
| (audio) Part 5. Closing, thanks and invitation to join GAMAG’s revitalisation. Aimée Vega Montiel |