The 17th annual ARIJ Forum kicked off in Jordan on Friday, under the theme: “Journalism Unbound”, with the participation of about 2,500 journalists and supporters of investigative and independent journalism.

More than 750 participants have arrived at the forum, and about 1,800 have registered to participate virtually, from more than 60 countries.

More than 130 speakers, half of them are women, will participate in 35 sessions during the three days of the forum, which concludes on Sunday evening, December 8, with the announcement of the winners of the ARIJ Awards for the 15th consecutive year for the best Arab investigative investigations. 188 investigative investigations from 33 Arab countries applied for the award this year. ARIJ’s Arab Fact Checkers Network (AFCN) will also announce the results of its 2024 award.

ARIJ also announced the launch of the Resilience in Journalism Award, an annual award, launched this year, that recognizes a journalist, organization or group that has exceptionally persevered in the face of challenges. This year, it’s awarded to all journalists in the Gaza Strip, Palestine. The award was symbolically received by journalist YoumnaElsayed, who covered the war from Gaza; award-winning Palestinian filmmaker Ashraf Mashharawi, whose crews cover the war in Gaza daily; photographer Hussein Abu Jaber (father of the martyred child Salma); journalist Shorouk Al-Aila (widow of martyred journalist Rushdi Al-Sarraj); and journalist Hikmat Yousef (from Press House founded by martyred journalist Bilal Jadallah), as a symbol for every journalist in the Gaza Strip.

ARIJ announced that it has joined 1,700 organizations from 100 countries in receiving the Reporters Without Borders’ “Press Trust Initiative,” a professional certification that represents international standards for ethical journalism.

This year’s opening ceremony was attended by the ambassadors of Canada, the Netherlands, Ireland and South Africa, as well as diplomatic representatives from the Swedish and Norwegian embassies, among others, to celebrate support for independent journalism, especially investigative and fact-checking journalism, in the region.

ARIJ also launched the second and updated version of Mark Hunter’s Guide to Investigative Reporting, which media professors at Arab universities are being trained on how best to use, as well as an Arabic-language guide to climate justice with an investigative lens.

“Holding a hybrid forum, in these circumstances that Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Sudan in particular, and the entire Arab world in general are going through, is very difficult logistically and editorially, but the ARIJ team believes that continuing to hold the forum for the seventeenth consecutive year is a message to the world that we can rise above the wounds and believe in joint action for accountability and transparency, networking for change and putting human rights on the global agenda under circumstances where crime and injustice prevail and the shadow of justice and humanity is absent,” said Rawan Damen, Director General of ARIJ.

Twenty training workshops, a research meeting and seven exhibitions will be held on the sidelines of the forum (December 6-8), most notably: “Tribute to Colleagues” and the UNPRESS exhibition inspired by the ‘Gaza Project’. In addition to individual clinics for physical, digital, psychological and legal security and safety, and the submission of investigative investigation proposal ideas. In addition to open workshops in multiple areas of security and safety, data journalism and artificial intelligence, and the launch of an app to document the use of starvation as a tool of war.

Over the past 20 years, ARIJ has trained more than 7,000 journalists, editors and fact checkers in more than 18 Arab countries, supervised the production and publication of 1,000 investigations and in-depth reports, established in 2020 the first Arab network for information auditing, in 2021 the first Arab platform for whistleblowers, and in 2024 launched an artificial intelligence strategy to support investigative investigations and fact checking in the Arab world.