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The Director-General of UNESCO, Irina Bokova, has denounced the murder of Somali braodcast journalist Mohamed Ibrahim Rageh, who was shot dead in Mogadishu on 21 April.

“I condemn the murder of Mohamed Ibrahim Rageh,” declared the Director-General. “His name is a sad addition to the all too long list of reporters and media professionals killed in the line of duty in Somalia.”

According to the NGO Reporters Without Border, Mohamed Ibrahim Rageh, a journalist, presenter and producer for public broadcasters Radio Mogadishu and Somali National TV was killed by two armed men outside his house in Ma’ma’anka, in Mogadishu.

Mohamed Ibrahim Rageh had recently returned to Somalia after several years in exile in Kenya and Uganda. A former member of the National Union of Somali Journalists and presenter at Radio Shabelle, he resigned from both in 2009 after receiving death threats from members of the Al-Shabaab militia.

Mohamed Ibrahim Rageh is the third Somali journalist whose death has been condemned by UNESCO so far this year. The list of killed journalists is to be found on the dedicated page, 

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Media contact: Sylvie Coudray, s.coudray(at)unesco.org,  +33 (0)1 45 68 42 12

UNESCO is the United Nations agency with a mandate to defend freedom of expression and press freedom. Article 1 of its Constitution requires the Organization to “further universal respect for justice, for the rule of law and for the human rights and fundamental freedoms which are affirmed for the peoples of the world, without distinction of race, sex, language or religion, by the Charter of the United Nations.” To realize this the Organization is requested to “collaborate in the work of advancing the mutual knowledge and understanding of peoples, through all means of mass communication and to that end recommend such international agreements as may be necessary to promote the free flow of ideas by word and image…”