Professional photo and video journalists working in Gaza are to receive an annual press freedom award on Monday for risking their lives to report on the war, an association of publishers has said.
The 2026 Golden Pen of Freedom will be handed to representatives of global news agencies still operating in Gaza — Agence France-Presse, The Associated Press and Reuters — “whose local journalists continue to provide consistent, professional coverage under extremely challenging conditions”, said the World Association of News Publishers (WAN-IFRA).
“For over two and a half years, journalists in Gaza have recorded death, destruction, and human suffering in unparalleled terms,” reads the citation of the award.
“They are as much victims of the conflict as they are chroniclers of a war that erupted — and continues — around them.”
Since October 2023, Israel’s war on Gaza — documented by international experts as a genocide against the Palestinian people — has killed over 72,819, wounded 172,894 others, and forcibly displaced 90 percent of the population. The military campaign and crippling blockade have reduced the entire territory to rubble, destroying much of Gaza and sparking a severe humanitarian crisis in the strip that has at times crossed into famine.
To suppress the truth, Israel has systematically targeted the journalists documenting these atrocities.
Media rights group Reporters Without Borders (RSF) says Israeli forces have killed more than 220 journalists, at least 70 of whom were killed in the context of their professional duties.
AFP photographer Mohammed Abed, who worked in Gaza until April 2024 before joining its Cairo bureau, will be among those at the ceremony in the French city of Marseille.
The award “acknowledges the sacrifice and endurance of local Palestinian media professionals living and working in a war zone,” said WAN-IFRA, which holds its 2026 World News Media Congress from Monday to Wednesday.
“It also recognises colleagues injured and killed in the course of doing their job.”
The Israeli government has barred foreign journalists from independently entering the blockaded territory since the war began.
Despite the October 2025 ceasefire, Israel has continued near-daily attacks on the defenceless Palestinian population, killing at least 877 and injuring over 2,602 while refusing to lift its blockade or withdraw forces occupying up to 60 percent of the strip.
*This story was edited by Ahram Online.
source/content: english.ahram.org.eg (headline edited)
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Palestinian men carry an injured man at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip. Saher ALGHORRA for AP
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