Egyptian journalist Mostafa Al-A’sar in Nov., 2024. Al-A’sar, who now lives in Canada, was jailed by Egyptian authorities for nearly four years.Duane Cole/The Globe and Mail
Jordan MacInnis is the director of domestic programs, and Mujtaba Haris is a journalist and a program manager, at Journalists for Human Rights.
In 2024, a record number of people lived outside of the country in which they were born. The figure is now over a quarter of a billion worldwide, the highest in history.
This number includes a surge in journalists who are either fleeing conflict or a domestic culture of impunity, and are forced to move. According to non-profit International Media Support, exiled media workers may become the main, if not the only, source of public-interest journalism in a growing number of countries across every continent other than North America.
No single organization monitors the total global number of journalists in transit. It’s a hard figure to track. As one media organization told us, even though journalists tend to gather in hubs (Turkey for example, draws exiled journalists from at least half a dozen other countries), they also tend to move around. The result is that fewer journalists are reporting from their country of origin than ever before.
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A few themes emerge from this trend. Journalism is a sector that, in more and more parts of the world, is shaped by movement. The withdrawal of a single journalist changes the media in their country. They may take entire newsrooms with them, altering access and coverage. Sometimes, it’s the sheer volume of departures that staggers. Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Reporters Without Borders estimates that between 1,500 and 1,800 independent Russian journalists have gone into exile and now deliver news to Russian audiences from 25 different countries. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, an international public broadcaster, employs 700 full-time journalists in 23 countries. More than half of them work in exile due to threats at home.
Media professionals are also displaced within borders. Prince Murhula is a former journalist who runs the Journalists for Human Rights, or JHR, office in Goma, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. When Goma fell to M23 rebels in January, he went to Bukavu, a city seven hours to the south. When Bukavu fell to the rebels a few days later, he went to Uganda. Three months later, he moved back home. Unsurprisingly, hybrid media, where an organization works partly inside and outside a country, is also more common.
The other theme is impunity for authoritarian leaders, which leads to exile. And impunity – along with hostility, violence, foreign-agent laws, and self-censorship – is why journalists are leaving their home countries. The price of being a journalist remains high. IDEI, the International Day to End Impunity for Crimes Against Journalists, was recognized by the UN more than a decade ago to highlight this very issue, but crimes against journalists haven’t declined since. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, in 2024 the total number of journalists killed was the highest ever recorded. UNESCO now puts the global rate of unresolved or abandoned cases of journalist killings at 85 per cent. The UN Plan of Action on the Safety of Journalists and its recommendations are a step toward better accountability, but there is still much work to be done.
There is also insight to be gleaned from journalists themselves, like Mostafa Al-A’sar, an Egyptian journalist and writer who was jailed for nearly four years. He now lives in Canada. For him, impunity is still a pressing issue. Many survivors, he said, hope that justice will be served.
Safeguarding journalists through training, technical assistance or community engagement, as JHR’s programs do on four continents, keeps information flowing. Reporters have the ability to change public opinion, which is why authoritarian leaders target them. Part of the remedy is to help media workers navigate the legal, financial and cultural barriers they encounter when they move, and ensure they can access the right to safe return should they choose it.
Given the opportunity to return home, many exiled journalists do so. For example, JHR is currently conducting one of the first studies of media development inside Syria since the Assad regime fell, speaking to 150 journalists, members of the public and media and civil society leaders. What is striking is how many of them have gone home. All have said it’s now easier to access areas of the country they couldn’t before, and to cross the border. That journey, said Aslan Allaz, a journalist at Syrian News Channel, would have been unimaginable before. Now, for Mr. Allaz and others, it’s a reality.
Every exiled journalist deserves to have the freedom to return home and work in their chosen profession. In showing our support for journalism, we are helping ensure freedom of movement for those who have dedicated their professional lives to holding power to account.