The 2024 UNESCO/Guillermo Cano Prize honors Palestinian journalists covering Gaza

3 May 2024 · Velours newsroom

Participantes en la conferencia del Día Mundial de la Libertad de Prensa 2024 de la UNESCO en Santiago de Chile · Photo: Mimartinez (WMCL) (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Wikimedia Commons

UNESCO awarded the 2024 UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize to Palestinian journalists covering the war in Gaza, on the recommendation of an international jury of media professionals. The award was presented in Santiago, Chile, as part of World Press Freedom Day.

The jury’s chair stressed humanity’s debt to journalists reporting under conditions of enormous danger. Since the war began in October 2023, the international press has been unable to enter the Strip independently, making local reporters the primary — and often the only — source of direct information.

The prize is named after Guillermo Cano Isaza, editor of the Colombian newspaper El Espectador, murdered in Bogotá in 1986 for exposing the influence of drug trafficking.

Source: UNESCO.