"The End User" wins The UN Correspondents Association prize

December 8, 2019

Mohammed Aboelgheit, a member of the ARIJ network, has reaped gold at the United Nations-affiliated Ricardo Ortega Award for Audio-visual Journalism for his investigative documentary: “The End User”.


The United Nations Correspondents Association (UNCA) announced last week that the Egyptian colleague Aboelgheit won this prestigious award, which is awarded annually to the best investigations related to the activities of the United Nations and its bodies.


The “End User” investigation was broadcasted on  Deutsche Welle (DW)/ Arabic Service in November 2018, and was translated into English, German and Spanish. 


In his investigation, Aboelgheit revealed how ten Western countries violated bilateral arms sales contracts and relevant international laws, resulting in contractually-weapons reaching the hands of conflict parties in Yemen. 


The report received huge international media attention, when it was broadcasted in four languages. And Aboelgheit became the only Arab candidate out of four others to be shortlisted, after screening 14 reports of prominent journalists from different nationalities.


Aboelgheit received his award Friday evening in New York, during a ceremony held under the auspices of UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, with the participation of journalists, diplomats, and artists.


Parallel to the UN-related prize,, “The End User” was selected on the shortlist entries of the Fetisov Journalism Awards. Winners will be announced in January 2020.


Aboelgheit’s prize is the latest in many gained by ARIJeans since its inception in Amman in 2005. Aboelgheit had already won the Samir Kassir Award for the Freedom of the Press, for his investigative report “The Alive Dead Season”.


ARIJ’s pioneering journalists have won top awards, notably of the following competitions: Samir Kassir Award for Freedom of the Press in 2018, Global Shining Light in 2017, Raif Badawi for courageous Journalists in 2019, EU Migration in the Middle East both in 2017 and 2019, Dusko Jovanovic International Investigative Journalism, in addition to numerous award competitions which were held in the Middle East and North Africa.


The investigative documentary in Arabic


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