Report warns of sharp decline in press freedom in Yemen and across MENA calls for international accountability

Press freedom in Yemen and across the Middle East and North Africa has deteriorated sharply over the past year, with journalists increasingly exposed to abuses that in some conflict zones amount to war crimes, the advocacy group Women Journalists Without Chains (WJWC) said in a statement marking World Press Freedom Day on May 3.

The organization described a “systematic and dangerous decline” in protections for journalists between May 2025 and May 2026, citing a surge in arbitrary arrests, extrajudicial killings and the use of domestic laws to silence independent voices. It warned that the erosion of international safeguards has left reporters operating in increasingly hostile and lawless environments.

Yemen remains a focal point of concern, the group said. Thirty-one media workers were killed in September 2025 in an Israeli strike on a Houthi-affiliated media center, while local actors have continued to carry out arbitrary detentions and unfair trials. The country’s protracted conflict, now in its second decade, has further compounded risks for journalists attempting to report from the ground.

Tawakkol Karman, chair of WJWC and a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, said the current trajectory signals what she described as “the official death of international immunity for journalists,” arguing that reporters in the region are no longer facing only the traditional hazards of the profession but are increasingly subjected to targeted killings and systematic repression.

“The international community’s failure to protect hundreds of journalists in Gaza, Sudan and Yemen — and its silence toward the weaponization of laws against free expression in several countries — amounts to a green light for the continuation of these crimes,” Karman said, urging governments and international bodies to move beyond statements of condemnation and take concrete steps to hold perpetrators accountable.

The report highlighted the particular vulnerability of women journalists, who face overlapping forms of