UNITED NATIONS – Journalists from China, Ethiopia, India and Nigeria have been selected as 2011 Fellows by the board of the Dag Hammarskjöld Fund to come to New York this autumn to cover the 66th U.N. General Assembly annual debate. The four were chosen from among nearly 200 print, radio and television journalists who applied from Latin America, Africa and Asia.
Each year, the Dag Hammarskjöld Fund selects four mid-career journalists from the developing world to travel to New York for 10 weeks to cover the annual debate and to immerse in deliberations and decisions of the various U.N. agencies, funds and programs. As news budgets shrink and reporting restrictions are expanded, programs like the Dag Hammarskjöld fellowship bring additional international press coverage -- and scrutiny -- to the world body.
"These four young journalists come from very different cultures, but each has brought to his or her work a passion for accountability, a practical understanding of governance and development, and a keen talent for storytelling," said Dag Hammarskjöld Fund Chair Evelyn Leopold.
The recipients of 2011 Dag Hammarskjöld Journalism Fellowships are:
Kingsley Amayo, 28, works for Independent Television/Radio in Benin City, Nigeria, which reaches some 25 million viewers and listeners. He came to reporting on diplomacy through theatre arts studies (his bachelor’s degree) and served as an intern at the International Criminal Court in The Hague. He interviewed ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo in an effort to discover whether the court would investigate the deadly religious rioting in Jos, Nigeria. At the United Nations, he is interested in discovering how Africa fits into the global community and whether the world sees her only as a “sleeping” continent.
Altamash Hashmi, 28, is a correspondent for the CNN-IBN (Indian Broadcast Network), based in Utter Pradesh and reaching 45 million viewers. He has focused on developments in Pakistan and Afghanistan and was able to access sources in Bahrain and Libya during the upheavals there. He is anxious to explore further the work he has done on India’s quest for a permanent UN Security Council seat. And Mr. Hashmi wants to investigate how a global focus on humanitarian issues and minority rights can prevent conflicts.
Liu Kunzhe, 34, is a reporter for the China Youth Daily, based in Beijing where she is the chief reporter in the international department. Ms Liu reports on foreign embassies and dignitaries in China and has been sent abroad to cover such events as a G-20 summit. She has travelled to five continents and has two masters’ degrees: from China’s Communication University and the London School of Economics. “Even a taxi driver in Beijing can talk” about the United Nations, she writes, saying she feels duty-bound to cover the world body in “breath and depth by using my own eyes and ears.”
Kirubel Tadesse, 26, is a senior correspondent for government institutions as well as the African Union in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. He works for the Capital newspaper and covers major political news, economics and writes his own Internet blog. He says that UN activities, despite the presence of UN agencies, are largely under-reported in Ethiopia, and he hopes to change this during his stint at the world body. Mr. Tadesse has travelled to Poland, Turkey, France, Belgium, Britain, Japan and Kenya, sometimes at his own expense.
The Fund was created in 1961, in memory of second U.N. secretary general Dag Hammarskjöld of Sweden. The first fellowship was awarded in 1962 and, in the decades since, hundreds of journalists from many developing nations have benefited from the program. The Fund is not funded by the U.N. It is a separate not-for-profit organization funded by contributions from U.N. missions, foundations, corporations, individuals and other private sources. Journalists based at the United Nations volunteer their time to select the fellowship recipients and to mentor them during the fellowship.
The Fund has become increasingly important in recent years as fewer and fewer news organizations can afford to maintain reporters at the United Nations. The fellows write about development, human rights, global health, peacekeeping and other U.N. themes, without any restrictions imposed on their work.
