Their deaths take to almost 100 the number of journalists, media workers and support staff who have lost their lives doing their work since the start of 2014 – and the vast majority of them have been shot by people who did not like the stories they were trying to tell. In Cambodia this month, for example, reporter Taing Try was shot dead for reporting on the country’s illegal timber trade. Tens of thousands of miles away in the border region between Paraguay and Brazil, Pablo Medina Velazquez and his assistant Antonio Almada suffered a similar fate, killed when they were reporting on the illegal drugs trade. The attention of the world may have been focussed on the safety of journalists in war zones such as Iraq and Syria in recent months, but we urge the authorities in countries like Cambodia and Paraguay to work efficiently and effectively to bring the killers of journalists there to justice. Impunity is a scourge that threatens the safety and therefore the freedom of the press around the world – with less than 10 percent of the killers of our colleague being brought to justice. It is something the international community has been talking about trying to end for years, and we welcome the fact that this year sees the inaugural International Day to End Impunity for Crimes Against Journalists next week, and urge all those taking part to ensure their words are followed by actions and their pledges are followed by practical actions. Of course, war zones too present a major threat to journalists and we have recorded the deaths of too many of our colleagues in the conflicts of the Middle East this year, while dozens more are still being held, kidnapped or detained, across the region. The Middle East formed the focus of a discussion I took part in at City University in London last week where I was honoured to join a panel of immensely experienced colleagues, including the BBC’s chief international correspondent Lyse Doucet, its foreign editor Andrew Roy, ITN’s International Affairs Editor Rageh Ommar and The Independent’s Defence Correspondent Kim Sengupta. Chaired by Professor Suzanne Franks, we discussed the challenges to journalism with the increasing risks to safety in the Middle East and the implications that this has on deployment decisions and coverage. Also last week, INSI’s lead trainer Caroline Neil attended the Global Security Summit hosted by the Thomson Reuters Foundation, where she ran a seminar for approximately 40 international journalists on living and working in challenging environments. She trained participants in preparation and planning for assignments, threat and risk assessment and how to keep someone alive – “breathing and bleeding.” We are grateful to TRF for inviting us to participate in this important event.  As we look ahead to next month, we would like to remind all our supporters that INSI’s AGM will take place between 10am and midday on Wednesday November 12 at the offices of Czech TV in Prague. If you would like to attend, please let us know in advance. We have chosen to hold our AGM in Prague this year to coincide with the annual broadcast industry conference News Xchange, which will take place in the Czech capital the same week. We are very much looking forward to attending this event and to continuing the discussions with our colleagues and friends across the industry about how we can support you in your safety decisions. Please join us for our workshop at News Xchange on November 14 dealing with safety and crisis management. We hope to see you there. Hannah Storm, INSI director Photo: Journalists in Paraguay protesting the murder of Pablo Medina (AP).