NEW YORK, NY(SMIWIRE,10.25.18)-The International Women's  Media Foundation (IWMF), hosted it's 29th Annual Courage in Journalism Awards Luncheon at noon today, honoring renowned American broadcast journalist " Lesley Stahl", Rosario Mosso Castro (Mexican's ZETA Magazine Editor-In-Chief ), Meridith Kohut(American's International PhotoJournalist), Zehra Dogan(Turky's JINHA News agency Founder), & Nima Elbagir (Sudan's International Journalist/TV Correspondent), with full house of journalists and executives of major news media networks in attendance and sponsored by Bank of America at Cipriani's-42nd Street in the heart of New York City.

 

The International Women's Media Foundation (IWMF) has worked to unleash the potential of women journalists as champions of press freedom to transform the global news media for almost three decades.

It also has ensured that women journalists worldwide are fully supported, protected, recognized and rewarded for their vital contributions at all levels of the news media. IWMF main goal it's to increase demand for news with a diversity of voices, stories and perspectives as a cornerstone of democracy and free expression.

Since its inception in 1990, the IWMF has honored more than 100 female journalists from 54 countries.

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" The Courage in Journalism Awards", is given to selected women journalists annually, who have exhibited extraordinary courage in reporting from areas of instability, oppression and conflict, during an award luncheon ceremony.

This year honoree:

Nima Elbagir : Recipient of 2018 Courage in Journalism Award

(CNN International Journalist/TV Correspondent, Sudan)

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Nima Elbagir is an award-winning senior international correspondent for CNN based in London. She joined CNN in February 2011 as a Johannesburg-based correspondent before moving to the network's Nairobi bureau and later London. A recipient of the Royal Television Society's (RTS) 2016 Specialist Journalist of the Year Award for her investigations into abuses perpetrated against women and children, including the sale of displaced Nigerian children to Boko Haram and the mutilation of British Somali girls by FGM practitioners in Nairobi, Elbagir has focused much of her reporting on Africa. In the fall of 2017, Elbagir traveled to Libya with producer Raja Razek and photojournalist Alex Platt to investigate reports of African migrants being sold at slave auctions.

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Carrying concealed cameras onto a property outside the capital of Tripoli, Elbagir and Razek witnessed a dozen African migrants auctioned off -- some for as little as $400 -- in less than 10 minutes. Their shocking report, which sparked a global outcry, was recognized with a George Polk Award in the Foreign Television Reporting category as well as the RTS Award for Scoop of the Year this year. The report was instrumental in the passage of unprecedented United Nations sanctions against six men identified as traffickers by the U.N. Libya Sanctions Committee in June 2018. At immense personal risk, Elbagir reported on the Ebola outbreak that ravaged West Africa in 2014, going inside Liberia's quarantine zones and exploring the devastation the disease wrought across both urban and rural communities. She was also the first international journalist to report from Chibok, the northern Nigerian village from which over 250 schoolgirls were kidnapped by the terrorist group Boko Haram in 2014. Nearly two years after their abduction, Elbagir and producer Stephanie Busari obtained a 'proof of life' video for some of the kidnapped girls. Over the years she has reported from Somalia at the height of the famine; exclusively interviewed Safia Gadhafi, the former Libyan leader's wife, in Tripoli; and reported on the child slaves sold and re-sold by ISIS.

 

 

Elbagir also anonymously reported CNN's 'Damascus Undercover' series, gaining extraordinary access to life in Syria over an extensive period in the summer of 2012. She went on to win the Overseas Press Club's David E Kaplan and the Edward R Murrow awards, but was not identified at the time for security concerns. As a freelancer for CNN, she covered the escalating violence against women in the Congo; Nigeria's 50th anniversary of independence; the South Sudanese Referendum; and CNN's coverage of the Hajj. Before joining CNN, Sudanese-born Elbagir worked in various capacities for the UK's Channel 4 for a number of years starting in 2005: She freelanced from Kabul for Channel 4 News; reported for the "Unreported World" documentary strand; and both reported and presented for Channel 4 News and More4 News. During this period, Elbagir's exclusives included getting the first interview with the Aegis security company whistleblower on the Iraq "Trophy Videos" (2005); interviewing Jacob Zuma in the run-up to his rape trial (2006); being the only Western journalist reporting from Mogadishu during the U.S. bombing of Somalia (2007); and broadcasting the first televised evidence of Iranian weaponry smuggled to the Taliban (2009).

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