In September, a Maltese business tycoon was acquitted of complicity and criminal association in the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia, an anti-corruption journalist whose 2017 death sparked global outrage. Caruana Galizia was killed by a car bomb while she was in the process of investigating offshore companies with links to the Maltese establishment. Nine years later, not a single person has been held accountable for ordering her assassination.
“Everybody is much more at risk now because this signals you can kill journalists with impunity,” Caruana Galizia’s sister said after the verdict. The tragedy of Galizia’s death and the lack of justice for her murder serve as an extreme demonstration of the intertwined nature of impunity—the exercise of power without accountability—and press freedom.
In September, a Maltese business tycoon was acquitted of complicity and criminal association in the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia, an anti-corruption journalist whose 2017 death sparked global outrage. Caruana Galizia was killed by a car bomb while she was in the process of investigating offshore companies with links to the Maltese establishment. Nine years later, not a single person has been held accountable for ordering her assassination.
“Everybody is much more at risk now because this signals you can kill journalists with impunity,” Caruana Galizia’s sister said after the verdict. The tragedy of Galizia’s death and the lack of justice for her murder serve as an extreme demonstration of the intertwined nature of impunity—the exercise of power without accountability—and press freedom.
This connection is a key finding in the latest edition of the Atlas of Impunity, published in June by the Eurasia Group and supported by the Thomson Reuters Foundation. The Atlas shows that the deterioration of press freedom has been the most significant contributor to impunity across the globe in the past five years.
Although the level of global impunity has largely remained the same in recent years, impunity has worsened rapidly in specific countries. The Impunity Map shows that accountability has weakened the most in conflict zones, which increasingly involve nonstate actors: Syria, Afghanistan, Myanmar, and Sudan are among the countries with the worst levels of impunity. While the number of conflicts and battles is rising globally, these incidents are increasingly concentrated in specific areas.
The Press Freedom Map closely mirrors the Impunity Map, demonstrating that it is not just conflict that undermines accountability. Highly centralized and controlled states such as China and the Central Asian republics, while not engaged in major “live” conflicts, nonetheless have some of the worst scores for press freedom—and thus high levels of impunity. Press freedom, after all, is essential to the creation of a culture of accountability.
All but one of the top 10 states for worsening press freedom also saw a rise in overall impunity in the past five years. (In the Atlas, higher press freedom scores signify less freedom.)
In the country with the steepest press freedom score increase, Afghanistan, the Taliban government has implemented a series of increasingly draconian laws that restrict speech since the group regained power in 2021. As the Atlas notes, this crackdown has “fueled unaccountable governance and increased economic exploitation.” More than two-thirds of the country’s journalists have left the profession over the same period, according to Reporters Without Borders. Meanwhile, Kyrgyzstan, the country with the fourth-largest increase, is one of several countries that has used new laws on “misinformation” to quell independent media.
Perhaps the greatest individual blow to the information ecosystem and accountability as a whole has been the huge reductions in foreign aid programs for media and civil society in recent years, which have created gaps in how trustworthy information is sourced, verified, and shared. This oversight has serious worldwide consequences: Impunity is not a narrow, localized problem. In an age of global organized crime and transnational repression, attacks on accountability affect us all.
But if declining media freedom is the single greatest contributor to rising impunity, then the reverse must also hold true: Increased media independence and resilience can reduce impunity. The world just needs courage, resources, and commitment.
Graphics by Lori Kelley, executive creative director; lead illustration by Sara Stewart, senior creative director, product; data editing by Maxine Davey, editorial fellow
Antonio Zappulla is the CEO of the Thomson Reuters Foundation. X: @antozappulla
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