Published on 5/29/2026
The International Association of Newspapers and News Publishers announced that it will award, next Monday, the Golden Pen Award for Press Freedom to photographers and video journalists working in the Gaza Strip for documenting the war at the risk of their lives.
The global association said that for more than two and a half years, journalists in Gaza witnessed death, destruction and human suffering with unprecedented intensity.
She added that these journalists are victims of the conflict as much as they are historians of a war that broke out, and is still continuing, around them, as she put it.
The association explained that Israel has been preventing foreign journalists from entering the Gaza Strip since the beginning of the war, with the exception of a few dozen journalists whom it allowed to visit the Strip from time to time, accompanied by its army.
Representatives of news agencies
The award will be awarded in the coastal city of Marseille in southern France to representatives of the French Press, Associated Press, and Reuters news agencies operating in Gaza, including photographer Muhammad Abd.
The award is also given to their colleagues who were injured or killed in Gaza while documenting the war waged by the Israeli army since October 2023.
From Monday to Wednesday, the Association is organizing the 77th World News Media Congress, in partnership with CMA Media, the media arm of the shipping company CMA-CGM.
More than 220 journalists have been killed by Israeli army fire in Gaza since the start of the war, including at least 70 while working, according to a tally published by Reporters Without Borders at the end of 2025.
More than 72,800 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli army gunfire since the start of the war, including more than 900 since the ceasefire announced in October 2025, according to the Ministry of Health in Gaza.
