The United Nations has stressed the need to defend press freedom and ensure the safety of journalists.
It stated this in a message to the second UN inter-agency meeting on the safety of journalists and the issue of impunity in Vienna, Austria and which was made available at the UN headquarters in New York on Thursday.
According to the world body, 2012 is set to become one of the deadliest years for media workers covering not just conflicts, but also illegal activities in their countries.
The meeting is being attended by UN agencies, independent experts, governments, media houses, and civil society organisations, to discuss the most pressing issues facing freedom of expression.
It would also create a new UN strategy to improve the safety of media workers and effectively prosecute those who commit crimes against them.
“More than one hundred journalists have been killed so far this year, making 2012 the deadliest year for the media since the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) began keeping records on the killings of journalists.
“And we are only in November,” the Director-General of UNESCO, Irina Bokova, said in her message to the meeting.
According to her, of the journalists killed this year, 22 were killed as a result of the Syrian conflict and 18 were killed in Somalia.
She noted that the overwhelming majority were not war correspondents, but local reporters covering illegal activities such as drug trafficking and illegal logging.