Nima Elbagir to Receive 2019 Daniel Pearl Award for Courage and Integrity in Journalism

CNN senior international correspondent Nima Elbagir is receiving the 2019 Daniel Pearl Award for Courage and Integrity in Journalism.

LA Press Club will honour Elbagir with the 2019 Daniel Pearl Award for Courage and Integrity in Journalism at the 61st SoCal Journalism Awards Gala on 30 June in Los Angeles.

The award-winning international journalist and television correspondent has garnered acclaim specifically for her in-depth investigating and uncovering slave auctions of African refugees in Libya, child slavery on Lake Volta in Ghana, use of child labour in the cobalt mines in the Congo, the sale of displaced children to Boko Haram, and more recently the use and transferring of American-made weapons to Al Qaeda-linked groups and other hardline militias in Yemen.

The Daniel Pearl Awards for Outstanding International Investigative Reporting is distinguished among journalism prizes worldwide, created specifically to honour cross-border investigative reporting. Formerly known as the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) Awards, the prizes were renamed in 2008 in honour of Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reporter Daniel Pearl, who was killed by militants while reporting in Pakistan in 2002. 

The London-based Sudanese-British Elbagir has racked up a variety of awards. She has been honoured with a duPoint Award, a Polk Award in 2017, the International Center for Journalists 2018 Excellence in International Reporting Award and the 2018 IWMF Courage in Journalism Award in October.

New African magazine also named Elbagir as one of the ‘100 Most Influential Africans of the Year‘ in its December 2018 issue along with radiologist Dr Hania Morsi Fadl, founder of Khartoum Breast Care Centre (KBCC); and social activist and writer, Yasmin Abdel-Magied.

Elbagir was born in Sudan in 1978. She holds a Bachelor of Science (BSc) in philosophy from the London School of Economics (LSE). Her father is well-known journalist Ahmed Abdullah Elbagir, and her mother Ibtisam Affan was one of the first publishers in Sudan. The Elbagir family left Sudan and moved to the UK in the early 1980s. Her sister Yousra Elbagir is also a well-known journalist who writes for BBC Africa, BBC Radio 4, BBC World Service, CNN Africa, Financial Times and The Guardian.