Iraqi journalists win top award for best reports in 2013 at the Arab Investigative Journalism Conference in Amman
Three Iraqi journalists from the Network of Iraqi Reporters for Investigative Journalism (NIRIJ) shared the first prize for the best investigative reports in the Arab world at the 6th Annual Conference for Investigative Journalists held in Amman from 6 – 8 December
by Falastin Ismail, IMS
350 Arab journalists and 30 foreign experts participated in the conference. The female Iraqi journalist Mayadah Dawood won the first prize for her investigation: “Half a billion dollars in annual privileges implicate Iraq’s parliament in the biggest corruption phenomenon in the Middle East”. Read it here.
Ms. Dawood expressed her pleasure in winning the award for the third time and added that she will keep working to reveal corruption in Iraq.
Also Dlovan Barwari and Salam Jihad were honoured for their investigation: “The children of the victims of al-Qaeda fighters may become the new generation of extremists.”
Iraq, a perilous environment for investigative journalists
Both Mr. Barvari and Mr. Jihad acknowledged the difficulties in working with such sensitive issues, but added that they will continue revealing and investigating the use and abuse of children in Iraq and Iraqi Kurdistan.
The dangers of carrying out investigative journalism in Iraq was cruelly demonstrated with the murder of journalist Kawa Germyani at his home in Sulemaniyah on Friday, 6 December, following a journalistic investigation into corruption at government level. The investigations carried out by his awardwinning colleagues are thus all the more impressive and important to bring to light.
The investigations of the award-winning journalists were carried out under the auspices of The Network of the Iraqi Investigative Journalism (NIRIJ), the first network of its kind in Iraq, founded in May 2011 by a number of professional investigative journalists with support from IMS. NIRIJ provides financial, editorial and advisory support to investigative Iraqi journalists.
