Syrian freelance journalist Hadi Abdullah won one of the world’s top press awards for reporting from some of the most perilous zones in his country’s five-year-old war.
- Reporters without Borders (RSF) said it was awarding the 29-year-old Syrian the RSF-TV5 Monde prize, the second year running that the honour has gone to a Syrian. Abdullah, who was briefly abducted in January by the Al-Nusra Front jihadist group, “has had frequent brushes with death,”.
- In 2015, the award went to Syrian journalist Zaina Erhaim for her reports from the besieged city of Aleppo.
Reporters Without Borders:
Reporters Without Borders is an international non-profit, non-governmental organization that promotes and defends freedom of information and freedom of the press. The organization, with a head office in Paris, France, has consultant status at the United Nations.
Reporters Without Borders has two primary spheres of activity: one is focused on Internet Censorship and the New Media, and the other on providing material, financial and psychological assistance to journalists assigned to dangerous areas.
Its missions are to:
- continuously monitor attacks on freedom of information worldwide;
- denounce any such attacks in the media;
- act in cooperation with governments to fight censorship and laws aimed at restricting freedom of information;
- morally and financially assist persecuted journalists, as well as their families; and
- offer material assistance to war correspondents in order to enhance their safety.
