Iraqi Journalist Huda Ahmed Named 2006-07 IWMF Elizabeth Neuffer Fellow

 Washington, DC – The International Women’s Media Foundation announced today that Huda Ahmed, a correspondent for Knight Ridder based in Baghdad, has received the Elizabeth Neuffer Fellowship. Ahmed is the second recipient of the annual fellowship, which gives a woman journalist working in print, broadcast or online media the opportunity to focus exclusively on human rights journalism and social justice issues.

Ahmed will spend the nine-month fellowship as a research associate in residence at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Center for International Studies. She will also have access to the Boston Globe and New York Times.

The fellowship is named for Elizabeth Neuffer, a Boston Globe reporter and the winner of a 1998 IWMF Courage in Journalism Award who was killed while on assignment in Iraq in 2003. Neuffer’s life mission was to promote international understanding of human rights and social justice.

Ahmed has been a reporter for Knight Ridder in Baghdad since 2004. She previously worked as an interpreter, researcher and reporter for The Washington Post and as a translator for The Daily Baghdad Observer and Al Jumhurriya Daily, all in Baghdad. Ahmed has written about the issues of women and children at risk in a war zone, the struggles of women in politics in a Muslim society, and human rights abuses by police and occupying forces.

"I want to understand, and to be able to make the world understand, the conflict here,” she wrote in her fellowship application.

Ahmed was recognized in 2004 by Knight Ridder’s Washington bureau for extraordinary bravery in covering combat during the siege of Najaf in southern Iraq.

The Elizabeth Neuffer Fellowship is a project of the Elizabeth Neuffer IWMF Fund, which also supports the Elizabeth Neuffer Forum on Human Rights and Journalism. Ahmed’s fellowship was announced at this year’s Elizabeth Neuffer Forum, which is being held today at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston.

The Elizabeth Neuffer Fund is generously supported by Peter Canellos, Mark Neuffer, Carolyn Lee, The Boston Globe and the Boston Globe Foundation, the Correspondents Fund, MIT Center for International Studies, United Nations Foundation and numerous friends of Elizabeth Neuffer. The Elizabeth Neuffer Forum was presented with the support of The Boston Globe and was co-sponsored by the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and John F. Kennedy Library Foundation.

The IWMF was launched in 1990; its mission is to strengthen the role of women in the news media worldwide. The IWMF network includes more than 1,500 women and men in the media in more than 130 countries worldwide.

For further information, visit http://www.iwmf.org/programs/neuffer, or e-mail neuffer@iwmf.org.

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