An investigation by KirkukNow website has won the third prize in the annual competition for the best report on human rights.
The results of the eighth season of the competition for the best journalistic reports related to human rights in 2023 were announced at a ceremony in Kalar district of Sulaymaniyah province on Friday afternoon.
Ammar Aziz, a reporter for KirkukNow, won the third prize for his investigation entitled Dakhil Meets his Beloved Wife Samea after Years of Captivity; Story of Love Endured ISIS and Nine Years of Separation, published last June.
The investigation is about the rescue and return of a kidnapped Ezidi (Yazidi) woman to a camps for the Internally Displaced Persons IDPs in the Iraqi Kurdistan Region IKR. The story begins with years of captivity and suffering under the rule of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria ISIS, until she finally reaches her husband and ends nine years of waiting.
The first prize went to Diyar Jamal for a video report on Kurdistan24, Erbil-based TV channel, and the second prize went to Alan Najmadin for a report on Draw Media, Sulaymaniyah-based news website.
Winners of the 8th Human Rights Journalism Competition, Kalar, December 2023. KirkukNow
Azad Osman, director of Radio Deng, who is in charge of the competition, told KirkukNow, "The difference between this year's competition and previous years was that the number of reports submitted, including written and video reports, increased."
The Human Rights Journalism Competition has been going on for eight years and this year 37 journalists, including 10 women journalists, entered the competition. The reports included 22 written reports and 15 video reports.
Osman says they conducted a poll before the competition this year to get the opinions of journalists and decide whether to continue the competition, but everyone asked to continue.
The competition was organized by Radio Deng, an independent radio station in Kalar, with the support of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a non-profit organization founded in 1983 that aims to promote democracy around the world.
Previously, the reports and investigations of KirkukNow reporters for 2017, 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022 have won first to third prizes in the same competition for the best reports related to human rights.
In 2020, KirkukNow got the Most Progressive Media Outlet in a competition organized by Internews International for Iraqi media outlets that have been covering women's and gender issues in society.
KirkukNow is an electronic news website that focuses on publishing events and issues that occur in the geographical boundaries of the "disputed territories", or related to the geographical boundaries, in order to promote peaceful coexistence in this border and easy access to information.
KirkukNow was established in 2011 and publishes news and stories in four languages: Arabic, Kurdish, Turkmen and English.
