Malta, June 15, 2017  – ARIJ-coached journalist  Sameh Ellaboudy has won the EU’s 2017 Migration Media Award for his investigation titled “Eastern Gateway​”.

Ellaboudy, an Egyptian, followed the path of alternative routes sought by Syrian refugees seeking to flee to Europe after the EU accord with Ankara in 2015 sealed the porous Turkish frontiers.

He followed several refugees who boarded boats in the Turkish port of Izmir, en route to Sudan, among the few Arab states that still lets in Syrians without visas. From there, smugglers took them to Egyptian ports on the Mediterranean and then on to boats into Italy.

Ellaboudy picked up a Ist Prize in Video/Arabic in Malta yesterday. The Amman-based Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism (ARIJ) trained and coached Ellaboudy and funded his 26-minute video that was broadcast on DW Arabic.

ARIJ was launched in 2005 to promote investigative journalism in three Arab states through training. Now ARIJ is a network covering the whole Arab world.

The Migration Media Award recognizes and rewards the excellence, relevance and newsworthiness of up to 36 journalism pieces dealing with migration in the Euro-Mediterranean region.The award carries an EU-funded contract to produce a new original, longer, or more detailed, more researched piece on other aspects of migration or the issue initially dealt with.

This will result in up to 36 additional journalistic pieces.