First Place
David Gilkey, NPR
In Nigerian Gold Rush, Lead Poisons Thousands of Children: Children in the northwestern Nigerian village of Dareta wrestle in the dirt streets. Lead poisoning from the processing of gold from illegal mines in the village has sickened children. The problem first came to light in 2010, when children all of a sudden started dropping dead. In some villages over the course of a few months, one-third of the kids under the age of five died.
Second Place
Andrea Bruce, freelance for Noor Images
Gaza Conflict: After eight days of intense Israeli shelling from air and sea that killed 162 Gazans, including at least 30 militant commanders, and flattened many government buildings and private homes, a cease-fire agreement was reached in Cairo between Hamas and Israel. The short-but-deadly conflict in mid-November threatened a ground-invasion by Israel into Gaza, but was avoided through international politics involving the United States and Egypt.
Third Place
Andrea Bruce, freelance for Noor Images
Urban Survivors in Guatemala: Urban poverty, inequality and social exclusion are a long-standing syndrome of Latin American urbanization. The continent of largely urban societies is essentially fractured, showing a basic duality of rich and poor, formal and informal, organized and disintegrated, ruled and unruled. In addition, a wider set of problems have been emerging over the past decades such as alarmingly low levels of social trust and the proliferation of violence and fear through rape.
Award of Excellence
Andrea Bruce, freelance for Noor Images
A Deathly Cold: Over 100 children froze to death in the displacement camps surrounding Kabul, Afghanistan, in 2012. Despite the $60 billion dollars in non-military aid that has been given to the country, little reaches the poor and homeless who have fled fighting elsewhere in the country. Around 30,000 Afghans live in the camps, most originated from the South where there has been heavy fighting in Helmand and Kandahar.
Award of Excellence
Jahi Chikwendiu, The Washington Post
The New Face of Iraq: The summer of 2012 was Iraq’s first since 1979 that it was not under the thumb of either Saddam Hussein or a U.S.-led occupation. Seven months after the last U.S. troops left their country, Iraqis are surprisingly optimistic about the future, given the horrors of war they have endured for nearly a decade. Housing developments, shopping centers and hospitals are rising from the rubble, stores that had been closed for years are reopening, and old familiar sights are returning. But every step forward is weighed down by continued bloodshed, brutality and corruption. Violence has dropped from its height in 2006 and 2007, but people are murdered with bombs and guns every day. Coordinated bombings on July 23 killed more than 100 people and wounded dozens more, the bloodiest day in Iraq in two years. Oil production and revenue are surging back to levels not seen since before former president Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990. Yet the government barely provides the basics of life: schools, clean water and electricity on summer days that routinely crack 120 degrees.
Award of Excellence
Louie Paluy, ZUMA Press for Foreign Policy Magazine
War For Drugs: The war on drugs, the death, the violence and the toll it all takes.