The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) announced on Thursday that it has awarded the 2024 UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize to Palestinian journalists covering the war in the Gaza Strip for “their courage and commitment.”
The award was presented on Thursday at a ceremony at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Santiago, within the framework of the 31st World Conference on Press Freedom being held this week in Chile, and was collected by reporter and president of the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate, Naser Abubaker, representing all journalists in Gaza.
“I feel joy and pride, but this joy is mixed with sadness at the death of so many martyred journalists and with determination and will to demand accountability and find the killers,” said Abubaker, whose union brings together nearly 4,000 journalists.
Since Israel’s offensive in the Palestinian enclave began last October, at least 26 journalists and media workers have been killed in the exercise of their profession, according to UNESCO, which is investigating dozens more cases.
“Gaza journalists have worked for months under bombardment, surrounded by corpses and destruction, enduring extreme cold, hunger and thirst. They have lost their homes and their families, and yet they continue to work with the utmost professionalism,” Abubaker added.
The Islamist group Hamas said Thursday that it was still considering how to respond to Israel’s latest proposal to seal a truce agreement in the Palestinian enclave, where Israeli troops have caused the deaths of some 35,000 people since October 7, mostly women and children.
Hours earlier, the president of the international jury of media professionals in charge of deliberating the award, Chilean Mauricio Weibel, said that “as humanity, we have an enormous debt to the courage and commitment to freedom of expression” of Palestinian journalists in Gaza.
The UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize was created in 1997 in honour of Colombian journalist Guillermo Cano, who was murdered in front of the offices of his newspaper El Espectador in 1986, and honours individuals or organisations that have made a notable contribution to the defence or promotion of press freedom.
“Once once more, this award reminds us of the importance of collective commitment to ensure that journalists around the world can continue to carry out their essential work of reporting and investigating,” said UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay in the same press release.
It is the only prize of its kind awarded to journalists within the UN system and is funded by the Guillermo Cano Isaza Foundation (Colombia), the Helsingin Sanomat Foundation (Finland), the Namibia Media Trust and the Democracy & Media Foundation, Stichting Democratie & Media (Netherlands) and the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
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2024-07-13 21:44:53
