13 January 2012

UNFPA Leader Wins Media Award

UNITED NATIONS, New York, 13 January 2012—Dr. Babatunde Osotimehin, Executive Director of UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund, is a winner of the Population Institute’s 2011 Annual Global Media Awards for Excellence in Population Reporting. The awards, which are in their 32nd year, honour those who help raise public awareness of the challenges related to population and reproductive health. The Population Institute is a major United States-based non-governmental organization founded in 1969 to promote universal access to family planning information, education and services.

Dr. Osotimehin received this distinction in the category of Best Print Editorial for an editorial that was published in a leading weekly journal, Science, in July 2011. The editorial, Population and Development, highlights how population affects our planet’s future, and explains challenges facing a world of 7 billion people in terms of poverty reduction, pollution, food, water scarcity and health. It also stresses that population initiatives that are grounded in human rights must be the central objective of national development policies that benefit families, communities and nations.  

During the award ceremony that took place in New York yesterday, Dr. Osotimehin said he was receiving the award on behalf of UNFPA, and dedicated it to survivors of obstetric fistula. Other winners included an Ethiopian serial drama, a Kenyan news article series, a Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist, and the highly regarded American news programme, the Public Broadcasting Service’s NewsHour.

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UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund, is an international development agency that promotes the right of every woman, man and child to enjoy a life of health and equal opportunity. UNFPA supports countries in using population data for policies and programmes to reduce poverty and to ensure that every pregnancy is wanted, every birth is safe, every young person is free of HIV/AIDS, and every girl and woman is treated with dignity and respect.

For more information, please contact:
Abubakar Dungus:  +1 212 297 5031, dungus@unfpa.org
Omar Gharzeddine:  +1 212 297 5028, gharzeddine@unfpa.org