FILE PHOTO: A Nigerian woman, unnamed to protect her identity, who told Reuters she received an abortion under a secret program run by the Nigerian military, poses for a portrait in an undisclosed location in Nigeria, September 28, 2020. Military leaders denied the abortion program ever existed. REUTERS/Paul Carsten
A team of Reuters reporters has won the Selden Ring Award, one of the top prizes in investigative journalism, for reports that exposed grave human-rights abuses against women and children by the Nigerian military.
The team - including reporters Paul Carsten, David Lewis, Reade Levinson and Libby George - were recognized for “Nightmare in Nigeria.” Their four-part series, published in December, chronicled previously unreported abuses by the Nigerian Army during its 14-year war with Islamist insurgents in the country’s northeast.
Citing dozens of witness accounts and documents, Reuters found that the army has run a secret mass abortion program aimed at women and girls who had been abducted and impregnated by insurgents, ending thousands of pregnancies. A subsequent report, again citing dozens of witnesses, found the army has intentionally killed children in the war, under a presumption they were, or would become, terrorists.
The award, which has been presented by the USC Annenberg School of Journalism for 34 years, honors the previous year’s outstanding work in investigative journalism that informs the public about major problems and yields concrete results.
The series spurred pressure on the Nigerian government to investigate the reported abuses from the U.S. departments of state and defense, the German foreign ministry, the United Nations, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. Human rights experts said the army’s actions could constitute war crimes.
Nigerian military leaders denied the abuses took place. Amid the international outcry, however, Chief of Defense Staff Lucky Irabor in December gave his support to an investigation by the country’s own human rights commission into the Reuters findings. The probe began this month.
Finalists for the 2023 Selden Ring award included The New York Times, for an investigation of educational failures at taxpayer-funded schools run by the Hasidic community in New York State, and the Los Angeles Times, for a probe of marijuana legalization, yielding a system that was a boon to politicians and organized criminals.
(Writing by Julie Marquis. Edited by Michael Williams)
