Nigerian investigative journalist Philip Obaji Jr. has received the Jaime Brunet International Prize at the Public University of Navarra in Pamplona, Spain.
Obaji who is the first from West Africa to receive the prestigious award previously won by Pope Francis, the Dalai Lama and other top personalities shared the prize with the Wassu Foundation, a non-profit organization fighting against genital mutilation in The Gambia.
The prize is endowed with 36,000 euros, which will be shared equally by both winners, as well as a diploma and a commemorative sculpture by Carlos Ciriza. The ruling was announced in December 2022.
The ceremony on June 16, 2023, was presided over by the chancellor of the university, Ramón Gonzalo, with over 100 guests, including personalities from the political and social world of the Foral Community.
In awarding the prize to Obaji, the jury highlighted Obaji’s “courageous activity as a journalist” for his documentation of “more than a hundred human rights abuses committed by mercenaries from the Wagner Group and their allies in West Africa, especially in Mali and the Central African Republic, despite threats, in an extremely dangerous context.
He was credited with unearthing and vividly portraying the individual stories of displaced people and refugees in West and Central Africa”, among other aspects.
The jury also acknowledged the Wassu Foundation for its “resolute fight against female genital mutilation” since its creation in The Gambia in 1999 by Professor Adriana Kaplan, anthropologist and professor of Social Transfer of Knowledge at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB).
Javier Lafuente Sancho, Chancellor of the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB), received the award on behalf of the Wassu UAB Foundation.
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