GIJN Welcomes 12 New Members, from Cameroon to Azerbaijan
by Rowan Philp for Global Investigative Journalism Network • September 26, 2024
The Global Investigative Journalism Network is delighted to welcome 12 new members from 12 countries: nonprofit organizations doing crucial watchdog work in areas from deforestation to African data journalism capacity and the exploitation of child migrants.
Approved by a unanimous vote of the GIJN Board of Directors, this cohort includes 10 brand new applicants from countries ranging from Azerbaijan to Ghana, and two former members who were readmitted after reorganizing their newsrooms. As part of a due diligence audit, GIJN also removed 11 members who have either become defunct, changed their registration, or whose work has evolved outside of our membership criteria.
While GIJN supports all watchdog journalism sectors through our training programs and free resources, GIJN membership is limited to NGOs, independent nonprofit newsrooms, and educational organizations that actively work in support of investigative reporting and related data journalism.
With the Board’s latest selections, GIJN’s membership family now includes 251 members in 95 countries. (For a full listing, see our membership directory.)
Please join us in welcoming our newest members.
Confidencial is an investigative digital newspaper which has become a crucial voice for truth and independent media in Nicaragua. Forced to operate from exile in Costa Rica since 2021 after growing persecution from an autocratic regime, CONFIDENCIAL has to use strict security measures for reporters and sources even beyond Nicaragua’s borders — yet continues to produce award-winning rights abuse investigations. It also commands a popular following, with three million site users in 2023, and 465,000 subscribers to its YouTube channel. According to the outlet: “The environment in which we operate is highly complex and hostile. The Ortega-Murillo regime exerts tight control over information and suppresses any form of dissent. Independent media and journalists face constant threats, arbitrary detentions, and criminalization.”
Data Cameroon is a data journalism, news, and investigative reporting platform dedicated to promoting quality independent journalism in Central Africa. Published by ADISI-Cameroun, the team’s investigations focus on areas such as human trafficking, capital flight, and the exploitation of protected species. One recent data-driven report revealed the alarming scale of mass kidnappings by coordinated armed gangs in the Lake Chad Basin. The organization also trains cohorts of young reporters through an academy system.
Epicentro.TV is an independent digital outlet focused on investigating corruption, rights abuse, and the erosion of democratic institutions. Recognized as one of the fastest-growing digital media outlets in Peru, this nonprofit newsroom has already been recognized with several journalism awards since its launch in 2001, and built a reputation for exposing threats to democracy and the environment. Its reports are characterized by facts embedded with context. According to Epicentro.TV, its vision “is to create investigative journalism that contributes to a well-informed society that makes better decisions, fights for its rights, and defends democratic institutions. To achieve this vision, Epicentro.TV provides spaces for political and social conversation as a way to find solutions to crises in Peru and Latin America.”
Fundación Socioambiental Semilla is a foundation dedicated to social and environmental justice, free expression, and the empowerment of vulnerable communities. Its programs include the Blue Foresta Environmental Journalism Program, which supports and produces environmental investigative journalism in Bolivia. According to Fundación Semilla, its primary goal “is to make culturally sensitive funding available in local currency to community-based groups and small organizations who are the most vulnerable to environmental destruction, while also the main guardians of Bolivia’s most important biodiversity regions.”
The Investigative Media Lab (IML) at the University of Georgia is a center that trains young aspiring journalists, grows investigative reporting education capacity, and directly helps produce accountability stories in the public interest. As a training hub, IML offers courses, workshops, and resources to develop reporting and editing skills in the Caucasus. The Lab leads a cross-border project featuring journalists from Georgia, Ukraine, Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania, and Moldova to examine the impact of Russia’s war in Ukraine on pollution in the Black Sea area. It has also secured UNESCO funding for a project to enhance and empower women in investigative journalism education.
Lost in Europe is a cross-border nonprofit journalism project that investigates the fate and exploitation of thousands of child migrants that go missing after arriving in Europe. Comprising 23 investigative journalists from 12 European countries, including the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, and the UK, the team has already revealed the hidden plight of unaccompanied child migrants as one of the most pressing and undercovered issues in the world. Its findings include a revelation that 18,000 unaccompanied child migrants went missing from shelters and official registries in Europe between 2018 and 2020 alone. Lost in Europe also tells the stories of individual children, and uncovers the bad actors who exploit them — from drug gangs to human traffickers and the sex industry. The team won the inaugural Investigative Journalism for Europe (IJ4EU) Impact Award in 2021 for an investigation that tracked 60 Vietnamese children from Dutch asylum shelters to labor roles at cannabis farms and nail salons in the UK.
Mikroskop Media is one of the rare media outlets from Azerbaijan that regularly produces investigative stories in the public interest. Founded in exile six years ago by two Azerbaijani journalists and publishing in both English and the Azerbaijani language, this nonprofit has partnered with foreign newsrooms on several major projects, and has become a member newsroom of the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP). In a collaboration with Vice Media Germany, Mikroskop Media produced a powerful investigation that showed how political asylum seekers in Germany who were refused and deported back to Azerbaijan were quickly imprisoned there on trumped-up charges — just as they had warned German courts they would be.
Solomon is a small, Athens-based media organization that punches above its weight in producing and promoting investigative journalism projects. Focusing on issues such as migration, agriculture, and the environment, this deeply collaborative nonprofit team publishes public interest investigations, collaborates with cross-border partners, and also trains young journalists in accountability reporting. The outlet publishes major stories in both Greek and English. In 2021, Solomon was shortlisted for the European Press Prize for its investigation into the abandonment of child asylum seekers, The Logbook of Moria; a story that won an IJ4EU Impact Award in 2022. It has trained several cohorts of reporters since its launch six years ago, and has hosted investigative reporters and editors from organizations such as Lighthouse Reports and The Bureau of Investigative Journalism in online discussions on innovative methodology for environmental investigations.
Syria Indicator is an independent investigative journalism project that employs several independent reporters to pursue accountability stories in a challenging press environment. The team produced seven in-depth investigative stories in just seven months last year, with funding support from Free Press Unlimited, and its earlier Syrian Sea Oil in the Grip of Corruption investigation was shortlisted for a True Story Award. Its recent projects have dug into conditions faced by Syrian detainees in Libya, and the exploitation of young Syrian women via live streaming apps. Reports are published primarily in Arabic on the syriaindicator.org website, with some also translated into English.
The Centre for Climate Reporting is a nonprofit investigative journalism organization that holds accountable the many actors obstructing the world’s transition to a low-carbon economy. Using a collaboration and co-publishing model that amplifies their findings through media partners, this UK-based newsroom has already achieved a profound impact among audiences and policymakers with investigations into often shocking deal-making behind closed doors. Most sensationally: the Centre for Climate Reporting revealed that the host team for COP28 in Dubai planned to use the climate summit to secretly lobby for new oil deals, using innovative methods described in this GIJN tips story. According to the outlet: “In our short existence, we’ve had considerable impact, breaking major stories which have been picked up by news outlets around the world and informed discussions among world leaders about the future of fossil fuels.”
The Examination is a New York-based independent nonprofit that investigates preventable public health threats around the world. Taking on powerful industries such as tobacco, agribusiness, and polluting manufacturers, this team is driven by a research-based conviction that “certain industrial products and practices are responsible for more than a third of all global deaths.” In addition to holding powerful players accountable for profiting from harmful products, The Examination also spotlights hidden inequities in health outcomes that disproportionately affect minority and poor communities. Its mission statement declares that “Our ultimate ambition [is] journalism that informs public discourse, inspires positive change, and leads to a healthier world.”
The Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA) is a regional independent NGO that facilitates the training and production of impactful public interest reporting in the region. Underpinned by a network of national partner organizations in all 16 countries in West Africa, its media development emphasizes investigative journalism and fact-checking. Its research-based journalism project in Ghana, The Fourth Estate, has produced several impactful public interest investigations in subjects such as corruption, public health, and the environment. According to MFWA: “We aim to promote transparency, accountability, and due process in these areas through journalism. We also aim to highlight critical issues affecting people’s lives, shape public policy, empower people, and restore public trust and confidence in journalism.”
Rowan Philp is GIJN’s senior reporter. He was formerly chief reporter for South Africa’s Sunday Times. As a foreign correspondent, he has reported on news, politics, corruption, and conflict from more than two dozen countries around the world.
This article first appeared on Global Investigative Journalism Network and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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