UNICEF announces winners of 2010 MENA Child Rights Awards
Cairo/Amman, 4 November 2010 – UNICEF’s Regional Office for the Middle East and North Africa announced today the winners of its sixth regional media award the theme of which this year was child rights. The award ceremony took place in Cairo at the end of UNICEF’s Regional Media Forum which brought together media representatives from all parts of the Middle East and North Africa, along with UNICEF communication specialists and child rights experts. "The award is gaining increasing momentum every year,” said Abdel-Rahman Ghandour, UNICEF Regional Communication Chief. “Ways of addressing issues affecting children in the media are improving and are increasingly taking ethical principles into consideration. This, we hope, is also a result of the stronger interaction we have with the world of media, through fora such as this media forum." Philippe Duamelle, UNICEF Representative in Egypt, Khaled Mansour, Director of the Division of Communication at UNICEF headquarters in New York, and Ghandour presented the awards which included five categories this year: television, radio, photography, print, and online media.
And the winners were: • Television: "Vitamin" TV show, Dubai TV, United Arab Emirates. As in previous editions of the award, young people were strongly present among the winners. Ibrahim Stadi, from Sama Dubai Radio in the UAE; Rama Misri Zadah, from Syrian TV; Nayyirah Saad Abdel-Hamid Al Sharif, from the leading Egyptian newspaper al-Masri al-Youm; and Moroccan Iman Traish, who won the photography category, were rewarded for their work on behalf of young people their age. The jury, composed of UNICEF, media and child rights experts, also gave special prizes to works of unique and exceptional nature in content and form. Each of Anne-Marie Hajj, Lebanon, and Hayam al-Miflih, Saudi Arabia, won special prizes, in addition to the Be Free Child Protection Center in Bahrain for its series of cartoons showing the impact of family violence on children. Participants at the two-day media forum discussed the role of media in addressing violence against children in its multiple forms, including early marriage, child labor, female genital mutilation and the impact of violent images. In a premiere for this year’s forum, UNICEF invited script and TV drama writers in view of the great appeal of TV series and their effect on societal behavior, especially on the question of violence against children. On its final day, the forum announced that the theme for the next year’s edition would be violence against Children, the theme of discussion in Cairo. UNICEF has already started to receive applications for participation in the 2011 competition. About UNICEF: For further information, please contact: Abdel-Rahman Ghandour, UNICEF Regional Office for the Middle East and North Africa, +962-700-4567, arghandour@unicef.org
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