INSI's Annual Report 2024 has been released. Download here.

This is the part where I tell you how well we’ve done this year as an organization— supporting journalists, protecting them, making a difference.

Except we haven’t done that well at all. We have certainly tried, but we have also definitely failed. We all have. Gaza is where the buck stops, and where our words, our outrage, and our strategies have met a wall of indifference and impotence.

Words of anger, condemnation, or denunciation of what’s been happening feel hollow after a year like this. They fall short—empty and weightless—when measured against the unthinkable loss. In Gaza, journalists have been killed, starved, smeared and silenced. Entire lives have been reduced to a footnote, their sacrifices met with indifference by much of the West. No outcry, no reckoning. And still no access.

Israel’s refusal to allow outside journalists into Gaza has been a direct denial of our profession’s most basic purpose: bearing witness. It’s more than censorship; it’s an attempt to erase accountability altogether. This is setting a precedent that could soon be catching on in many other places.

A colleague told me how working on journalism safety this year has sometimes felt like standing behind a locked glass door as a house burns. You see the flames, hear the cries, press your hands against the barrier—but can do nothing. Over time, the horror numbs you, until you begin to accept that the fire may outlast you.

Our collective achievement this year, as an organisation made of active and participating members, has been to fight that creeping sense of impotence and numbness, to continue to stubbornly look for something we could do, no matter how small.

For instance, early in the year, we embarked on a project that seemed potentially useful and also provided us a measure of purpose and team morale. Our illustrated guide to emergency trauma care and improvising a medical kit—specifically created with Gaza in mind, but applicable to many other places— was aimed at journalists in war zones with absolutely no support and equipment. You’d think something like that already existed—how to make an effective tourniquet with a rag, or a chest wound seal with a piece of common plastic packaging. We couldn’t find anything that matched the needs and restrictions faced by Gazan journalists, so we did it ourselves and called it “When All Else Fails".

The guide, in English and Arabic, was designed to be simple, intuitive, and require little data to download in areas with difficult communications. Whether
it had any impact on the ground or helped any journalist prolong the survival chances of a wounded colleague, we may never know. At least it was a way to give colleagues there a fighting chance—to send a message through the scalding glass.

And of course it wasn’t only Gaza. There were also conflicts in Ukraine, Sudan, Lebanon, and then Syria. There has been anarchy in Haiti, fear in Russia, floods in Spain, and a hell of a lot of hate in the United States and beyond.

Throughout the year, together with our amazing members, we have followed the same stubborn ethos: looking to fill the gaps, complementing each other’s skill sets, pooling resources and information, showing up, and having each other’s back.

You’ll find a list of the numerous activities INSI carried out over the year in the following pages. If you consider that each of our members’ workload had likely doubled and their available time halved, their resilience and dedication to our shared purpose has been remarkable.

From pioneering a guide on working with high- risk advisors in the field to conducting workshops on the pros and cons of deploying with armoured vehicles or counter-drone technologies, together we’ve focused on practical solutions for a world increasingly hostile to journalists.

We’ve prepared for major events like Euro 2024, the Paris Olympics, and the US election. We’ve met regularly to strategise on how best to tackle the forces that are eroding journalism’s foundations: populism, disinformation, online abuse, and corruption. The obstacles remain staggering, particularly in the Middle East and Gaza, but the solidarity and ingenuity of our members are infectious and inspiring.

This isn’t about optimism. It’s about necessity. To not be defeated is to keep going when all else fails. And so we do.

– Elena Cosentino, INSI Director

Download INSI's Annual Report 2024 now

Image by AFP