Death threats were common for Maria Jimena Duzan, who covered the Colombian drug trade for a Bogota daily. The threats turned real for crusading Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who was assassinated in Moscow in 2006. These are just two of the 56 valiant women journalists who have received Courage Awards since the IWMF launched the program in 1990. Read their inspiring stories below. Consider nominating a colleague or friend for a Courage Award.
2009
Jila Baniyaghoob, Iran
Jila Baniyaghoob, freelance reporter and editor-in-chief of the website Kanoon Zanan Irani (Iranian Women Center), has fearlessly reported on government and social oppression, particularly as they affect women. She has been fired from several jobs because she refuses to censor the subject matter of her reporting and several of her media outlets have been closed by the government. The topics of her reporting make her a target of the Iranian government. She has been beaten, arrested and imprisoned numerous times.
Iryna Khalip, Belarus
Iryna Khalip, a reporter and editor in the Minsk bureau of Novaya Gazeta, has been a journalist for more than 15 years in Belarus, one of the most oppressive countries toward journalists in the world. After working at a succession of newspapers, only to see them closed by the government, she now works for one of the most independent newspapers in the former Soviet Union. Khalip has been arrested, subjected to all-night interrogations and beaten by police, who keep her under constant surveillance.
Agnes Taile, Cameroon
Agnes Taile has reported on human rights and press freedom, including unflinching stories on the ineffectiveness and corruption of government officials. In 2006, while she was a reporter for Sweet FM, Taile received threats demanding that she stop her pursuit of government corruption. She ignored the threats. Not long afterward, she was abducted from her home at knife point by three hooded men, then beaten and left for dead in a ravine. Her show was cancelled after the attack. After recovering, Taile was determined to keep working as a journalist and landed a new job with Canal 2 covering the northern provinces of Cameroon.
2008
Aye Aye Win, Myanmar
Aye Aye Win, a correspondent for the Associated Press in Myanmar, is one of the only women journalists in her country. Win works under the repressive military junta, so her movements are closely monitored by authorities. She has been called “the axe-handle of the foreign press” by other media outlets in Myanmar because she has helped open the door for foreign journalists to report on the country. Still, she risks her own safety to report.
Farida Nekzad, Afghanistan
Farida Nekzad is the managing editor and deputy director of Pajhwok Afghan News and vice president of the South Asia Media Commission. She frequently receives phone calls and email messages threatening her life. Despite working under tremendous pressure at a time when women journalists in particular are being threatened for their reporting in Afghanistan, Nekzad is committed to staying in her country to work toward a free press and greater equality for women journalists.
Sevgul Uludag, Cyprus
Sevgul Uludag is an investigative reporter for Yeniduzen newspaper in Cyprus. Uludag lives in the northern part of divided Cyprus but through her reporting attempts to ease the segregation between the Greek and Turkish communities. In doing so, she has faced many obstacles, including death threats and violent attacks. But neither hate campaigns nor psychological terror keep Uludag from publishing her articles.
2007
Lydia Cacho, Mexico
A correspondent for CIMAC news agency and a feature writer for Dia Siete magazine, Mexican journalist Lydia Cacho has endured numerous death threats because of her work reporting on domestic violence, organized crime and pedophilia.
Serkalem Fasil, Ethiopia
Ethiopian journalist and former publisher Serkalem Fasil was arrested in November 2005 and charged with treason and outrages against the constitution, charges that carry terms of life imprisonment or the death penalty. Her arrest came after her newspapers published articles critical of the Ethiopian government’s conduct in the May 2005 parliamentary elections. On the day of her arrest, Fasil, who was pregnant, was severely beaten by police.
Huda Ahmed, Shatha al Awsy, Sahar Issa, Alaa Majeed, Zaineb Obeid and Ban Adil Sarhan, Iraq
In the midst of the war in Iraq, the women of McClatchy’s Baghdad bureau risked their lives just to get to work. Driven by the desire to report to the world about the situation in their country, they became the backbone of bureau.
2006
Jill Carroll, United States
Jill Carroll, a staff writer for The Christian Science Monitor, was working in Baghdad as a freelance reporter for the Monitor when she was abducted on January 7, 2006. Carroll was kidnapped about 100 yards from the office of Adnan al-Dulaimi, a prominent Sunni politician. She had scheduled an interview with him but started to leave after an aide told her he was unavailable. Upon driving away, a large truck blocked the path. Armed men surrounded the car, and Carroll was shoved and kidnapped. After an 82-day ordeal, she was released March 30 and returned to the U.S. April 2
May Chidiac, Lebanon
May Chidiac is one of the best known faces on Lebanese television. In September 2005, the Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation journalist lost her left hand and left leg as a result of a bomb exploding under the driver’s seat of her car. After months of recovery, she resumed her broadcasting career at the LBC.
Gao Yu , China
Gao Yu, a freelance journalist who lives in Beijing, has twice been jailed for her reporting. She continues to fight against censorship, expressing her belief in human rights and the value of democracy.
2005
Anja Niedringhaus, Germany
Anja Niedringhaus began working as a freelance photographer at age 17 while still in high school. In 1989, while a student at the Goerg-August University in Goettingen, Germany, she covered the collapse of the Berlin Wall for the German newspaper Goettinger Tageblatt.
Sumi Khan, Bangladesh
Sumi Khan began working as a journalist in 1993 when she started freelancing for several national daily newspapers in Bangladesh. In 1999, she became a reporter for the Daily Jugantor in Dhaka. She had been there for less than a year when she published a report about a high-ranking official at an oil company who allegedly raped his maid. The businessman was friends with some of her editors at the Jugantor, and Khan was forced out of her job for writing the story. Other media also covered the story, but Khan believes that she was harassed because she was the only woman who reported it.
Shahla Sherkat, Iran
Shahla Sherkat is the editorial director of Zanan (Women) in Tehran. Sherkat founded the monthly magazine in 1991, after she was dismissed from her position as editorial director at the government-owned weekly magazine Zan-e Rouz (Today’s Woman). She was pushed off the staff, she says, because she protested the magazine’s coverage of women’s issues, which only appealed to conservative, religious women who fit an image set forth by the Iranian government.
2004
Gwen Lister, Namibia
Gwen Lister, 50, began working as a journalist in 1975 in Namibia, when it was a province of South Africa known as South-West Africa. After completing her degree at The University of Cape Town, Lister took a job at the Windhoek Advertiser. She soon left the paper when the South African government put pressure on the editor to sign a document stating that the Advertiser would cease to print positive articles about the South-West Africa People’s Organization (SWAPO), which opposed the government and its system of apartheid.
Mabel Rehnfeldt, Paraguay
Mabel Rehnfeldt began her journalism career in 1983 at Sendero, the official newspaper of the Catholic Church in Paraguay. Sendero was the only independent newspaper published during the final years of General Alfredo Stroessner’s 35-year dictatorship. (Stroessner was overthrown in a 1989 coup and currently lives in exile in Brazil.)
Salima Tlemcani, Algeria
Salima Tlemcani is the pen name of an Algerian journalist who began writing under this name in 1994, after receiving death threats from armed Islamic groups who did not like the way she reported on them. She has requested that she receive the IWMF Courage in Journalism Award under her pen name.
2003
Anne Garrels, United States
Anne Garrels, a foreign correspondent with National Public Radio in the United States, was one of only two American women journalists in Baghdad during the recent war. Her vivid reporting brought the reality of a country under bombardment to her listeners. At one point she was blown back into the elevator of the Palestine Hotel, where she was staying, when a nearby building was bombed from the air. At another, she watched as a cruise missile passed right in front of her window. When U.S. bombs fell on the hotel killing two journalists, she was only a few floors away.
Tatyana Goryachova, Ukraine
Tatyana Goryachova is the editor in chief of Berdyansk Delovoy, the only independent newspaper in Berdyansk, Ukraine, a small town on the Azov Sea. Her husband, Sergey Belousov, is the paper’s publisher. Goryacheva often covers city government, healthcare and local issues, and when she uncovers corruption in these institutions, she writes about it. In Ukraine, a country with one of the worst press freedom records in the world, this is perilous.
Marielos Monzon, Guatemala
Marielos Monzon, a columnist for the daily Prensa Libre in Guatemala City, Guatemala, is known for her commitment to reporting on human rights violations in her country. Guatemala is a country still coping with the brutal aftermath of a 36-year (1960-1996) civil war in which an estimated 200,000 Guatemalans were killed. By reporting on the bloody aftermath both in her newspaper column and until recently as co-host of a radio program, Punto de Encuentro (Meeting Point), Marielos Monzon has incurred the rath of those who would bury the past.
2002
Anna Politkovskaya, Russia
Anna Politkovskaya, a reporter for the independent, Moscow-based newspaper Novaya Gazeta, has covered both sides of the war in Chechnya, earning harassment from both the Russian government and Chechen rebels. She is known for her investigative reporting documenting atrocities against the civilian population of Chechnya by the Russian military.
Kathy Gannon, Canada
On September 11, 2001, Kathy Gannon, who has reported for the Associated Press from Pakistan and Afghanistan since 1988, became the eyes and ears of the Western press in Kabul.
Sandra Nyaira, Zimbabwe
Sandra Nyaira is political editor of the only independent newspaper in Zimbabwe, The Daily News. She works amid almost daily harassment in a country with one of the worst press freedom records in the world. President Robert Mugabe, aided by his minister of information, Jonathan Moyo, has waged war on the independent press. All journalists must be licensed by the government and they can be prosecuted for criticizing Mugabe and his government. In Zimbabwe, journalists who cross the president risk beatings, torture and death threats.
2001
Amal Abbas, Sudan
In the two years since she became editor-in-chief of the Khartoum-based independent daily newspaper Al-Rai Al-Akher, Amal Abbas has faced constant harassment and censorship. The only female editor-in-chief of a newspaper in Sudan, Abbas was sent to prison in January 2001 and held for 36 hours because she published an article charging a judicial authority with misappropriating funds.
Jineth Bedoya Lima, Colombia
Jineth Bedoya Lima, a 27-year-old reporter for El Espectador, a daily newspaper in Bogota, Colombia, covers the conflict between the Colombian government and paramilitary groups. Her reports have regularly earned her harassment and death threats from those she writes about.
Carmen Gurruchaga Basurto, Spain
Carmen Gurruchaga Basurto, a political reporter for El Mundo, a Madrid-based daily newspaper, writes frequently about the Basque separatist group, ETA. Gurruchaga's stories have so threatened the terrorist group that since 1984 it has waged a campaign against her, hoping to intimidate her into stopping reporting on their activities.
2000
Zamira Sydykova, Kyrgyzstan
Zamira Sydykova, editor-in-chief of Res Publica, an independent newspaper founded in Kyrgyzstan in the wake of the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991, is a leader in the independent media in Central Asia.
Marie Colvin, United Kingdom
Marie Colvin has fearlessly reported from behind the front lines of nearly every violent conflict in the world in the last 15 years. In 2000, she brought readers of The Sunday Times closer to conflicts in Kosovo, East Timor and Chechnya.
Agnes Nindorera, Burundi
In Burundi, independent journalists covering the ongoing six-year civil war risk death threats from both sides of the conflict. Still, freelance journalist Agnes Nindorera broadcasts what she sees, despite escalating threats to her life. She pursues the story of a civil war in which 200,000 people have died, caught in a conflict between Tutsi-dominated Burundian government forces and Hutu rebels.
1999
Sharifa Akhlas, Afghanistan
Sharifa Akhlas was born and educated in Afghanistan, but now works in exile as a radio and television producer and reporter for the Afghan Media Resource Center (AMRC) based in Peshawar, Pakistan.
Aferdita Kelmendi, Kosovo
Aferdita Kelmendi began her career working for Radio Pristina, a station controlled by the Yugoslav government. But when communism fell and gave way to civil war in the former Yugoslavia, she saw a need to educate youth in non-violence.
Kim Bolan, Canada
Kim Bolan has been a reporter for The Vancouver Sun since 1984. In the past 15 years, she has covered wars in El Salvador, Guatemala and Afghanistan, but Bolan is best known for her coverage of the Sikh community in Vancouver, Canada.
1998
Blanca Rosales Valencia, Peru
Blanca Rosales launched her journalism career writing a column for Marka magazine on labor rights issues and, in 1996, became editor-in-chief of La Republica, one of Peru's largest daily papers. As the relationship between the press and the government of Alberto Fujimori continues to erode, journalists are regularly threatened. In 1997, Rosales was one of those targeted when she was abducted and held at gunpoint for several hours.
Anna Zarkova, Bulgaria
Anna Zarkova is chief of the Criminal News Department for Trud Daily. She has been awarded national prizes for her stories exposing organized crime, police violence and corruption, but has also received threats because of these articles.
Elizabeth Neuffer, United States
As European bureau chief for The Boston Globe, Elizabeth Neuffer reported from some of the world's most dangerous hot spots. She has been menaced by gun-toting rebels, subjected to death threats, abducted by soldiers, robbed and threatened with rape. In 1994, Neuffer was one of only a few reporters in Sarajevo when a bomb exploded in a marketplace and killed 68 people. She helped pick up the bodies and then wrote her story.
1997
Maribel Gutierrez Moreno, Mexico
Throughout her 20-year career, Maribel Gutierrez has been deeply involved in covering the experiences of rural and Indian communities in Mexico and especially in the state of Guerrero, one of the poorest in Mexico. In 1993, she co-founded El Sur, an independent newspaper covering local news, human and political rights, militarization, corruption and social problems, in a state where almost all press is under government control.
Bina Bektiati, Indonesia
Bina Bektiati began reporting about politics for the independent newsweekly Tempo in 1991. In 1994 the magazine was banned and its license revoked by the Suharto regime. A government-controlled publication replaced Tempo, but Bektiati refused to join. Instead, she challenged the ban in the courts and helped found the Alliance of Independent Journalists, Indonesia's only independent journalists association.
Corinne Dufka, United States
Before becoming a photojournalist, Corinne Dufka spent ten years as a social worker. Her interest in photojournalism began while working in El Salvador for a humanitarian organization providing mental health services to the victims of civil war. She found that photography allowed her to document the human rights abuses experienced by civilians and she began freelancing.
1996
Lucy Sichone, Zambia
A widow and mother of four, Lucy Sichone wrote for The Post, Zambia's leading daily newspaper. In February 1996, Sichone went into hiding, along with her 3-month-old baby, to avoid imprisonment for writing articles critical of the Zambian parliament. She was charged with contempt of Parliament, which would have dealt her a sentence of indefinite detention. The government issued a reward for information on her whereabouts, but Sichone remained in hiding, continuing to write articles demanding a return to press freedom for Zambia and her right to a fair trial.
Saida Ramadan, Sudan (in exile in Egypt)
Saida Ramadan, a Sudanese journalist, began writing in exile from Egypt after the Muslim fundamentalist-backed regime of Lt. General Omar Hassan al-Bashir took power in Sudan in 1989 and began a systematic campaign against the media. At the time, Ramadan was a correspondent for the Sudanese paper Al-Alam in Cairo. The paper was shut down, her passport revoked and she was not allowed back in her homeland.
Ayse Önal, Turkey
For more than a decade Ayse Önal has reported on Turkish politics, organized crime and conflicts in the Middle East. She was arrested and detained in Iraq while reporting on the Gulf War, threatened by Islamic fundamentalists and put on the revolutionary left's death list. In 1994 Önal was shot and wounded by the Turkish mob because of her stories linking the government and organized crime; she subsequently went into hiding for three months.
1995
Horria Saihi, Algeria
Algerian journalists, embattled from both sides in the ongoing civil war, continue their daily struggle to work as well as to stay alive. As a television producer, director and reporter, Horria Saihi has fought government censorship and the threat of fundamentalism since the mid-1980s. She has been condemned to death by Muslim fundamentalists, and went into hiding in late 1994 after discovering that she was on a hit list.
Gao Yu, China
One of the most respected journalists in China, Gao Yu was in prison when her award was announced. An economic and political reporter, she was sentenced in 1993 to six years in prison for "leaking state secrets," through - ironically - a pro-Chinese newspaper in Hong Kong. The charges brought against Gao led some observers to believe that the underlying goal was to send a message about acceptable boundaries of press freedom and limit media criticism of China's government.
Chris Anyanwu, Nigeria
While editor-in-chief of the independent weekly, The Sunday Magazine, Chris Anyanwu declined to publicly endorse the military regime of General Sani Abacha. Weeks later, she was arrested and sentenced to life in prison, charged with publishing stories about an alleged coup plot against Abacha and refusing to reveal the sources.
1994
Razia Bhatti, Pakistan
For 20 years Razia Bhatti was a leader in Pakistani journalism. After leaving a major magazine in 1988 because of limitations imposed on her writing, she founded and served as editor-in-chief of Newsline magazine.
Marie-Yolande Saint-Fleur, Haiti
As a photographer and founder of "Agence Haitienne d'Images," Marie-Yolande Saint-Fleur captured the repression of Haiti's citizens and the violence of its military rulers.
Christiane Amanpour, France
As an international correspondent for CNN, Christiane Amanpour has consistently delivered insightful and extensive reporting from some of the most dangerous hot spots in recent memory. For two years she covered civil strife in Bosnia, then the aftermath of the genocide in Rwanda, and the overthrow of the Haitian government.
1993
Mirsada Sakic-Hatibovic and Arijana Saracevic, Bosnia-Herzegovina
When the siege of Sarajevo continued into a second year of bloody civil war, Radio and Television Bosnia-Herzegovina's broadcasts to the outside world also continued because of dedicated journalists like Mirsada Sakic-Hatibovic and Arijana Saracevic. The two women put their lives in constant jeopardy, providing battlefront reports and up-to-the-minute accounts of hostilities that impacted the city's multi-ethnic population.
Cecilia Valenzuela, Peru
Cecilia Valenzuela received international attention for her courageous reporting of the military, the Shining Path and national security issues in her native Peru. After producing a television report on human rights violations in 1991, she was fined and sentenced by the Superior Court in Lima to one year in prison, which was conditionally suspended.
Donna Ferrato, United States
The issue of domestic violence is the centerpiece of the award-winning portfolio of American photojournalist Donna Ferrato. In focusing on battered women, Ferrato decided to live among families where violence was prevalent, providing more genuine portraits, but also placing her in considerable danger.
1992
Catherine Gicheru, Kenya
In the year leading up to Kenya's 1992 elections, Catherine Gicheru wrote a series of exclusive reports for the independent daily, The Nation, that exposed involvement of high government officials in the assassination of a local political figure. In retaliation for Gicheru's articles, the Kenyan government banned the paper from covering the Electoral Commission, which oversaw the 1992 presidential election.
Kemal Kurspahic and Gordana Knezevic, Bosnia-Herzegovina
When Serbian national forces began their attack on Sarajevo in 1992, Kemal Kurspahic editor-in-chief of Oslobodjenje, vowed to publish for as long as the city stood. Six staff members were killed and 10 wounded, but true to his word, the paper continued to be published - without missing a day - for the three-and-a-half year siege of Sarajevo.
Margaret Moth, New Zealand
Margaret Moth began her journalism career in her native New Zealand and joined CNN in 1990. She covered the Persian Gulf War, the rioting that followed Indira Gandhi's assassination and the civil war in Tbilisi, Georgia, for CNN before volunteering for the dangerous mission of filming in Sarajevo.
1991
Marites Vitug, Philippines
Marites Vitug was a reporter for The Manila Chronicle when she wrote of the plunder of the Philippines' last tropical rain forest by a greedy businessman and a corrupt politician. Her exclusive articles, which appeared in Dow Jones' Far East Economic Review as well as a number of Filipino publications, brought her death threats and a series of libel suits that threatened imprisonment. Despite this, she continued to report about the threats to the rain forest.
Lyubov Kovalevskaya, Ukraine
As reporter and editor of Tribuna Enerhetyky, the newspaper of the Chernobyl Atomic Energy plant in Ukraine, Lyubov Kovalevskaya obtained secret documents that enabled her to break the story about serious problems at the Chernobyl reactor one month before the nuclear accident. She spent the next three years collecting official documents on the facility and, risking her health, entered the forbidden radioactive zone more than 30 times to interview workers and cooperative officials. In addition to placing her health in jeopardy by entering Chernobyl, Kovalevskaya was persecuted by the KGB for criticizing a Soviet nuclear program.
1990
Caryle Murphy, United States
Caryle Murphy is a 20-year veteran reporter at The Washington Post. She astonished the world with her courageous reporting from Kuwait, where she hid for 26 days after the invasion by Saddam Hussein in 1990. Eluding Iraqi forces, she managed to file first-hand accounts and send them to her paper with people who were able to get out. Her byline and identity were kept secret until after she safely escaped. Murphy continued her assignment in the Middle East to cover the ensuing war in the Gulf.
Florica Ichim, Romania
As a result of her father's political imprisonment, Florica Ichim was refused education and employment. But she overcame these obstacles and ultimately began her journalism career in the late 1960s. When Ichim refused to join the Communist Party in 1975, she was forced to leave Romania Libera, the paper where she worked. But, ironically, just two days after the December 1989 revolution in Romania, Ichim was elected executive editor by the staff of the newspaper.
Maria Jimena Duzan, Colombia
Maria Jimena Duzan risked her life by daring to probe for the truth and stand firm for press freedom in a country known for violence against journalists. At age 30, she was already foreign editor, columnist, and chief investigator for the Bogota daily, El Espectador. Hard-hitting and incisive, Duzan took on the dangerous task of writing about the drug trade in Colombia. Her column, "My Zero Hour," was one of the last in the country to use a byline when criticizing drug cartels.
Liliane Pierre-Paul, Haiti
As a reporter for the independent Radio Haiti International in the 1980s, Liliane Pierre-Paul earned a reputation as one of the most outspoken critics of the Duvalier regime. Her fight for liberty persisted through subsequent Haitian governments, which continued to feel the sting of her criticism.