Colombia is the fifth worst country in the world for unsolved murders of journalists for the second year in a row, according to a new report.
It once again led Latin American nations in the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) 2012 Impunity Index, which measures how often members of the media are killed and how frequently those murders are solved.
The CPJ ranked Iraq the worst for unsolved murders of journalists, with Colombia placed fifth after Somalia, the Philippines and Sri Lanka.
The report criticized Colombia’s “unacceptably high” ranking, “a legacy of its deadly past and its continued shortcomings in prosecuting open cases.”
But it also praised recent judicial efforts to bring killers to justice.
“The fight to end impunity in crimes against the press is a long and complicated struggle,” Maria Teresa Ronderos, a Colombian journalist and member of the CPJ’s board of directors said in a statement.
The reported praised recent convictions and a slowed pace of journalist killings.
But it also highlighted the unsolved murder of award-winning reporter Guillermo Bravo Vega, who exposed government corruption and was shot dead in his home in 2003.
Ronderos said there remained more work to be done. “While lethal violence has receded, the number of threats has escalated and the investigations into these threats have gone nowhere,” she said.