RSF: Belarus ranks fourth in the world in terms of the number of journalists behind bars

Reporters With­out Bor­ders (RSF) annu­al sur­vey released: In 2024, jour­nal­ism pays a dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly high human price in con­flicts and repres­sive regimes.  Down­load PDF.

Image: RSF

550 jour­nal­ists detained

Locked-up jour­nal­ists are con­cen­trat­ed in four coun­tries
The world’s four largest pris­ons — Chi­na (124, includ­ing 11 in Hong Kong), Myan­mar (61), Israel (41) and Belarus (40) — hold almost half of the world’s detained jour­nal­ists.

Image: RSF

45% of miss­ing jour­nal­ists are vic­tims of enforced dis­ap­pear­ance.

Dis­ap­pear­ances are often attrib­uted to author­i­tar­i­an or neg­li­gent gov­ern­ments, which  high­lights the urgent need to com­bat impuni­ty and strength­en pro­tec­tions for jour­nal­ists.

RSF calls on all coun­tries to rat­i­fy the Inter­na­tion­al Con­ven­tion for the Pro­tec­tion of All Per­sons from Enforced Dis­ap­pear­ance, which was adopt­ed by the Unit­ed Nations Gen­er­al Assem­bly in 2006 but only counts 75 rat­i­fi­ca­tions to date.