KARACHI: Governments around the world, including Pakistan, are failing to investigate the murder of journalists, according to the Vienna-based International Press Institute`s (IPI) Death Watch.

The global advocacy group released a statement to mark the International Day to End Impunity for Crimes against Journalists observed on Thursday.

As per the IPPs findings, Mexico and India are the two countries where the greatest number of recent cases are pending investigation.

As many as 100 journalists, it noted, lost their lives around the world in connection with their work over the past year. Of these, at least 32 were killed in retaliation for their work, frequently in response to reports exposing corruption or the activities of crime syndicates.

The Death Watch includes additional 41 journalists whose killings are suspected of being linked to their work but for which there remains insufficient evidence due to poor or lacking investigations. The IPIsaid 13 journalists lost their lives covering armed conflicts, a majority of them in Afghanistan.

Analysis of the data collected by the IPI since September 2017 showed that in many cases of targeted 1(illing of journalists, investigations were slow, and the perpetrators had not been brought to justice.

Mexico and India, it noted, had emerged as the two countries where investigations into such cases have been particularly tardy. In Mexico, 14 journalists were murdered and in India 12 died in targeted attacksin the last one year.Sofar, arrests have been made in only two cases in Mexico and six in India. Most of these arrests were controversial, it observed.

In the case of Syed Shujaat Bukhari the editor-in-chief of Rising Kashmir who was killed on June 14 outside his ofHce, suspects had been identiñed but not yet brought to justice.

`The impunity with which journalists have been murdered and the slow pace of investigations raise the question whether the deaths ofjournalists are probed thoroughly and urgently as they should be to protect press freedom,` said the IPI Head of Advocacy, Ravi R. Prasad.

Journalist killings in Brazil, Guatemala, the Philippines, Afghanistan, El Salvador and Pakistan also await further investigation, the statement added.