The Committee to Protect Journalists calls on Tanzanian authorities to enact comprehensive reforms to support press freedom in a report submitted to the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) ahead of the country’s November 1 Universal Periodic Review (UPR).
The UPR is a peer review mechanism of the UNHRC, through which the human rights records of the Council’s member states are reviewed every 4½ years, and recommendations are made for improvement.
CPJ’s assessment of Tanzania’s press freedom record from 2021 to April 2026 found that “press freedom remains fragile and vulnerable to executive control” and that “authorities have continued to deploy restrictive laws to target journalists and media houses.”
CPJ recommended investigations into violations against journalists, including Azory Gwanda who has been missing since 2017, and the overhaul of problematic legislation. CPJ has documented a difficult media environment in Tanzania, including election-relation violations and censorship following the October 2025 elections.
Read the submission here and the annex here.
This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.