The 2025 International Day to End Impunity for Crimes against Journalists (IDEI) will be commemorated worldwide on Nov 2, 2025 under the theme of Chat GBV: Raising Awareness on AI-facilitated Gender-Based Violence against Women Journalists. It will highlight the threats women journalists face in the digital space and the chilling effect this can have on freedom of expression more broadly. This year’s commemorations will take place through local and national events, enabling local ownership and visibility. UNESCO encourages partners and networks to organise national-level events and activities, allowing local stakeholders to invest their energies into contextualising the thematic issues of crimes against journalists and impunity for their own settings.
UNESCO said in a report today that it will disseminate a global campaign on AI-facilitated gender-based violence, seeking to raise awareness of the grave risks to women journalists and other marginalised and vulnerable groups practicing journalism and the chilling effect on freedom of expression. The campaign draws on UNESCO’s programming on the safety of women journalists, the findings assembled for the forthcoming 2025 World Trends Report on Freedom of Expression and Media Development, the recommendations from the Beijing + 30 consultation and experts report to UNESCO.
IDEI 2025 seeks to reinforce the implementation of the UN Plan of Action on the Safety of Journalists and the Issue of Impunity, by addressing the urgent need to protect women journalists in digital and physical spaces. This day calls for renewed action from all stakeholders to tackle these threats through the implementation of safety mechanisms, policy reform, dialogue and platform accountability, ensuring safer and more equitable online and offline environments for women journalists worldwide.
AI-Facilitated Gender-Based Violence against Women Journalists: Women journalists are increasingly exposed to AI-driven threats such as gendered disinformation, surveillance, deepfakes, and harassment. This form of abuse, known as Technology-Facilitated Gender-Based Violence (TFGBV), has become alarmingly prevalent with the rise of generative AI. UNESCO’s 2021 study The Chilling revealed that 73% of women journalists had faced online threats, with one in four experiencing offline attacks as a result. More broadly, 58% of young women and girls globally have experienced online harassment on social media platforms, underscoring the scale of the problem beyond journalism (‘Your opinion doesn’t matter, anyway’).
UNESCO field research confirms these trends worldwide. In Zimbabwe, 63% of surveyed women journalists reported TFGBV, with hate speech, doxxing, and image-based abuse among the most common forms, and 14% facing physical violence linked to online threats (Understanding Technology-Facilitated Gender-Based Violence (TFGBV) Against Women Journalists in Zimbabwe). In Ukraine, 81% of women journalists experienced online violence, including defamation, gendered trolling, and threats extending to family members, often escalating into offline harassment (HER VOICE, THEIR TARGET: Gendered Online Violence Against Ukrainian Women Journalists).
IDEI 2025, under the theme Chat GBV: Raising Awareness on AI-facilitated Gender-Based Violence against Women Journalists, seeks to address these threats and strengthen implementation of the UN Plan of Action on the Safety of Journalists and the Issue of Impunity. It is a call to expose and counter AI-facilitated violence through dialogue, advocacy, and policy action, ensuring safer digital and physical spaces for women journalists.