OPC announced the awards Wednesday afternoon.
In addition, AP Senior Correspondent for Pakistan and Afghanistan Kathy Gannon will receive the organization’s President’s Award for lifetime achievement.
AP staff earned the Hal Boyle Award for best newspaper, news service or digital reporting from abroad, for their reporting on the exodus of Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar.
AP documented the methodical rape of Rohingya women by the country’s armed forces, revealed the army’s slaughter of Rohingya women and children, and told the story of a desperate young father who tried to save his family by fleeing. The work was completed with support from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.
The Hal Boyle Award is named for the AP columnist who earned a Pulitzer in 1945 for his distinguished World War II reporting.
The judges said:
The stories exemplified foreign correspondence at its best: exposing and chronicling human rights violations, putting a human face on conflict and providing a road map for future investigations into what world powers are calling genocide. Simply put, it was an incredible package that you want to urge everyone to read.
AP staffers share the Madeline Dane Ross Award for best international reporting in print or digital showing a concern for the human condition, for their documentation of triumph and tragedy in Mosul, following nine months of fighting to free the city from the Islamic State group.
The reporting “struck the right balance between aggressive reporting and sensitive writing on the horrors endured by Mosul residents,” according to the judges.
The journalists reported secret records of IS atrocities kept by staff at the city’s morgue, relayed the story of blogger Mosul Eye who shed the burden of anonymity months after the fall of IS, and introduced a teenage girl who survived IS rule in hiding for nearly three years.
Cairo-based investigative reporter Maggie Michael won the Joe and Laurie Dine Award for best international reporting dealing with human rights for her coverage of abuses in Yemen. The judges noted that Michael “took great personal risks, with her video colleague, driver and fixers, to tell the story of the 18 secret prisons in Yemen where detainees are tortured by men from the UAE.”
Michael’s reporting also included widespread starvation of children and mounting child marriages in the war-torn country.
“Michael and her team documented all of this and more in a chilling package that included charts, video and compelling graphics,” the judges said. “The response was immediate and included calls by U.S. senators and the government of Yemen for an investigation.”
A full list of winners is available here.
The OPC awards will be presented on April 26 at a dinner in New York.