Amman – Two Arab journalists, who investigated female genital circumcision in Iraq’s Kurdistan and abuse of domestic workers in Bahrain with help from ARIJ, have been nominated for the EU Lorenzo Natali Journalism Prize 2011.

Dlovan Barwari (Iraq) and Hana Buhejji (Bahrain) have been invited to attend the awards ceremony in Brussels on Dec. 8, where winners in each category will be announced, organizers of the prize said on Friday. The ceremony will be hosted by Andris Piebalgs, EU Development Commissioner.

The two journalists were trained by Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism (ARIJ) on the basics of in-depth reporting in line with its manual, before getting a grant and pre-publication legal screening. ARIJ-appointed coaches supervised them.

ARIJ is the region’s only media support network seeking to promote investigative journalism among journalists and editors since end 2005.

Barwari’s investigation won the first prize in the 2010 joint ARIJ-Seymour Hersh Award for best Arab investigative journalist.

Organizers of the European prize said they received entries from over 1300 journalists worldwide for all prize categories.

Three print and online press winners from each of the five geographic areas – Africa, the Arab World and the Middle East, Asia and the Pacific, Europe, and Latin America and the Caribbean – will receive prize money and a trophy.

In addition, there are two winners of the special TV and the special radio prizes, drawn from entries from all regions in addition to the Grand Prize for the best piece of work overall, as determined by an independent Grand Jury.

The prize was established in 1992 by the European Commission for journalists who have produced outstanding reporting on human rights, democracy and development.