On 28 October 2026 Ana Carmo reported on an event organised by the Permanent Mission of Greece, gender equality agency UN Women, and the UN education and culture agency, UNESCO,Every Voice for Peace Counts: New Perspectives on the Women, Peace and Security Agenda.
“Every woman journalist driven out of a conflict zone is a peace process that loses its witness,” said Nobel Peace Prize laureate Maria Ressa, addressing the United Nations this week. Ms. Ressa, who has faced arrest, legal cases and sustained online attacks, reiterated how intimidation can wear down journalists’ credibility and confidence, threaten their safety and ultimately kill their determination to continue reporting. At the height of the attacks against her, she received 90 hate messages an hour
Artificial intelligence is adding to the threat, enabling deepfakes, fabricated sexual images, cloned voices and coordinated attacks to spread at scale.
According to UN Women data, nearly one in four women human rights defenders, activists and journalists reported experiencing AI-enabled abuse which in time can manifest as physical violence.
Recent research highlights how online attacks – once dismissed as “virtual” problems – are now spilling offline, affecting women’s safety, well-being, and ability to participate freely in public debate.
Ms. Ressa called for online violence to be treated as such, arguing for stronger accountability for perpetrators and technology companies that amplify abuse, sustained funding for women-led journalism, and the inclusion of women journalists in peace and security discussions.
Protecting women journalists is not only about individual safety. It is also about whose experiences of conflict are documented, whose voices shape public understanding and whose contributions to peace are recognised.
“When women journalists are silenced, the women whose stories they are telling are also silenced,” said UN Women Deputy Executive Director for Normative Support, UN System Coordination, and Programme Results, Nyaradzai Gumbonzvanda. “So, it’s not just the silencing of the journalists, it’s the silencing of our collective story.”
Women in conflict settings are often portrayed as victims, she noted, despite their roles in preventing violence, mediating disputes, sustaining communities and rebuilding societies. When their experiences go unreported, the public sees only part of the reality of war, “half of the picture of peace”.
The scale of the problem is stark. According to a recent study by UN Women and UNESCO, 75 per cent of women journalists surveyed had experienced online violence. Forty-two per cent linked online attacks to abuse or assault in the physical world, up from 20 per cent in 2020.
International frameworks for protecting journalists already exist. Yet women journalists continue to face physical violence, legal harassment, psychological trauma and online campaigns designed to discredit their reporting.
As the International Day to End Impunity for Crimes against Journalists approaches on 2 November, UNESCO is preparing to launch a new campaign – Threats Evolve, Impunity Endures – alongside new findings on journalist safety and impunity.
“Every voice for peace counts,” said Ms. Ressa, “but a voice only counts if it is heard, if that woman survives being heard.”
Thomson Reuters Foundation is to host a two-day conference on 17 and 18 November focused on a post-pandemic roadmap to inclusive growth and the protection of free media and civil liberties. Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Ressa, and an Afghan reporter who fled the Taliban, Zahra Joya, will join a distinguished line-up of speakers that also includes world-renowned Professor of Economics Jeffrey Sachs, Executive Director of Aspen Digital Vivian Schiller and founder of craigslist, philanthropist Craig Newmark. 
On the occasion of World Press Day, the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) issued a report demanding the release of 422 citizen journalists in Syria, most of whom are detained by the Syrian regime, and are now threatened by the COVID-19 pandemic. The report notes that 707 citizen journalists have been killed since March 2011 to date, 78% of them by Syrian Regime forces. The 20-page report shows how the Syrian regime has been well aware of the danger posed by press freedom to its tyrannical rule for decades, abolishing all independent newspapers, and allowing only three official newspapers to be published, which are simply Syrian regime mouthpieces, dedicated to promoting, defending and justifying the regime’s actions. As the report further notes, it’s no exaggeration but simply a statement of fact to say that there is no such thing as a free press under the Syrian regime…..The report distributes the total death toll according to the main parties to the conflict, with the Syrian regime being responsible for the deaths of 551 citizen journalists, including five children, one woman, five foreign journalists, and 47 other citizen journalists due to torture in detention centers, while Russian forces were responsible for the deaths of 22 citizen journalists, and ISIS killed 64, including one child, two women, three foreign journalists, and three under torture. Hay’at Tahrir al Sham also killed eight, including two who died due to torture. Factions of the Armed Opposition were responsible for the deaths of 25 citizen journalists, including one child and three women.
