UNESCO has recognised the unique suffering and fearless reporting of journalists in Gaza by awarding them the annual Guillermo-Cano World Press Freedom Prize.
UNESCO says more than 100 journalists and media workers have been killed by Israeli strikes in Gaza since 7 October, and nearly all the rest have been injured, displaced or bereaved.
From the start of the conflict on October 7 with Hamas attacks in southern Israel, Israel closed Gaza’s borders to international journalists, and none have been allowed free access to the enclave since.
At the same time, 1000 Gazan journalists were working at the start of the war, and with more than a hundred of them killed the profession has suffered a mortality rate in excess of 10% (this rate is around six times higher than the mortality rate of the general population of Gaza and around three times higher than that of health professionals).
The UNESCO prize was awarded on 2 May in Santiago, Chile, as part of World Press Freedom Day and received by Nasser Abu Baker, president of the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate (PJS) and vice president of the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ). The IFJ, the world’s largest professional organisation of journalists, nominated the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate for the award.
PJS president Nasser Abu Baker, previously a long time reporter with Agence France-Presse (AFP), said: “Journalists in Gaza have endured a sustained attack by the Israeli army of unprecedented ferocity – but have continued to do their jobs, as witnesses to the carnage around them…What we have seen in Gaza is surely the most sustained and deadly attack on press freedom in history.”
IFJ General Secretary Anthony Bellanger said: “This prize is a real tribute to the commitment to information of journalists in Gaza. For the past seven months, the IFJ has been supporting journalists in Gaza through PJS, the only representative professional organisation in Palestine, by providing them with first aid equipment, batteries for their phones, tents, clothing and food. Journalists in Gaza are starving, homeless and in mortal danger. Unesco’s recognition of what they are still enduring is a huge and well-deserved boost.”
Recent previous winners of the Guillermo-Cano prize include in 2023 two female Iranian journalists – Niloofar Hamedi, Elaheh Mohammadi – and human rights activist Narges Mohammadi (who also won the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize), the Belarusian Association of Journalists (BAJ) in 2022. and Philippine journalist Maria Ressa in 2021 who also won that year’s Nobel Peace Prize.
UNESCO awards 2024 world press freedom prize to Gaza journalists
More than 100 Gaza journalists killed
Reporting the war in Gaza – Committee to Protect Journalists
Risking your life in Gaza – Reuters Institute
UNESCO Guillermo-Cano world press freedom prize
Belarusian Association of Journalists win prize 2022
Philippine journalist Maria Ressa and Russian journalist Dmitry Moratov win 2021 Nobel Peace Prize
World Press Freedom Day 2024
