“I condemn the killing of Camille Lepage, whose only desire was to show, through her work, the fate of marginalised populations,” said Irina Bokova. “ I call on the authorities of the Central African Republic to do everything possible to shed light on the circumstances of her death and bring the authors to justice.”

Camille Lepage, 26, was a freelance photographer who published her work in numerous media, including Libération, Le Parisien, Le Monde, Time, The Guardian, The Sunday Times, The Washington Post e and  The Wall Street Journal. In 2012, she moved to South Sudan and had been working in Central African Republic since September 2013. According to a  communique from the office of the French president, her body was found during a car search by  patrol from the French Sangaris force.

Camille Lepage is remembered on on the dedicated page UNESCO Remembers Assassinated Journalists.

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Press contact:  Sylvie Coudray, +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…"