The FJA’s global Expert Council have announced the shortlist for the 2025 competition, with 33 submissions from 19 countries chosen from a record number of entries.
This year’s bumper harvest of outstanding stories is more evidence that, in spite of the many crises facing news media, quality journalism around the world is alive and well.
The shortlist includes entries from France, the Netherlands, Qatar, Indonesia, UK, USA, India, Finland, Mexico, Italy, Canada, Germany, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, China, Nigeria, Cameroon, and Bosnia and Herzegovina, all of them competing for a share of the 520,000 CHF (USD 644,000) prize fund.
The shortlist will now be reviewed by the FJA Jury who select the finalists. The winners will be announced on 22 April next year at a Gala celebration of the Awards to be held in Cyprus.
Congratulations and good luck to all the shortlisted nominees for the Fetisov Journalism Awards 2025!
The shortlist is presented below.
Fetisov Journalism Awards 2025
Shortlist
Outstanding Contribution to Peace
Salma Abdulaziz Bashir
(Indonesia)
Forgotten and sentenced to die: Sudan’s women caught between war
Ali Al Ibrahim
(United Kingdom)
Unburying Syria’s Disappeared: Truth as the Road to Peace
Dana Hourany
(Lebanon)
Stolen By a Map: The Haunting History of Lebanon’s Lost Villages
Raquel Carvalho
(Hong Kong)
She Regrets Her Past With ISIS. Now She’s Reclaiming Her Future
Neha Wadekar, Zoe Flood
(USA)
The Long Road to Justice for Sexual War Crimes
Ibrahim Adeyemi
(Nigeria)
Terror From The Trolls (I): The Keyboard Warriors Fueling Plateau’s Ethno-Religious Crisis
Terror From The Trolls (II): The Ethnic Divide, Revenge Killings Behind Nigeria’s Christmas Massacre
Akua Nalova
(Cameroon)
Series on the conflict in Cameroon's English-speaking regions
Nurudeen Akewushola
(Nigeria)
Airstrike cover-up: Katsina government helped Nigerian Air Force conceal civilian deaths
Wolfgang Bauer
(Germany)
The Forgotten
Emina Dizdarević Tahmiščija
(Bosnia and Herzegovina)
Focus on War Crimes Verdicts Leaves Victims Feeling Disappointed and Bosnia Spent Millions on War Monuments in Bosnia During Decade Lost for Reparations
Learn more about the shortlisted stories here
Outstanding Investigative Reporting
Gina Barton, Nick Penzenstadler, Tricia Nadolny, Jayme Fraser
(USA)
Untested: America's rape kit backlog was a national scandal. A decade later, problems persist.
Mariel Mueller
(Germany)
Kidneys for cash: Inside a global organ trafficking network
Yuval Abraham
(Israel-Palestine)
Bomb the area, gas the tunnels: Israel’s unbridled war on Gaza’s underground
‘Order from Amazon’: How tech giants are storing mass data for Israel’s war
Leaked documents expose deep ties between Israeli army and Microsoft
George Joseph
(USA)
Revealed: UnitedHealth secretly paid nursing homes to reduce hospital transfers
Vijay Pal Dudi
(India)
Bhaskar’s big expose on child trafficking
1) New-borns bought from tribal couples for ₹20,000, sold for ₹8,00,000 Over 20 new-borns sold in a year; network of traffickers across 5 states; IVF centres-hospitals lure childless couples
2) Families with 6–8 children selling babies due to poverty; deals made during pregnancy Bhaskar reaches villages where babies are being sold
Learn more about the shortlisted stories here
Contribution to Civil Rights
Bellingcat (Ross Higgins, Connor Plunkett, Beau Donelly, George Katz, Kolina Koltai and Galen Reich), in collaboration with TjekDet, Politiken and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
(Netherlands)
Unmasking MrDeepFakes: Canadian Pharmacist Linked to World's Most Notorious Deepfake Porn Site
Pierre Leibovici
(France)
Decathlon profits from Uyghur forced labour in China // Decathlon, the hard labour textile factory in Bangladesh
Yashraj Sharma
(Qatar)
Does a Dalit’s life have no value?’: The murder of a teenage girl in India
Viriya Paramita Singgih
(Jakarta)
The fate of the indigenous O'Hongana Manyawa around Tesla’s supply chain on Halmahera
Salahelden Ibrahim Ali moursi laban
(United Kingdom)
The Dark World of Illegal Adoption in Egypt
Barbara Debout
(France)
Peacekeeper sex abuse rife in Central African Republic as survivors stay silent
Learn more about the shortlisted stories here
Excellence in Environmental Journalism
Tom Parry
(United Kingdom)
An invisible threat lurking in the water is slowly destroying these women’s lives
Erin McCormick, Verónica García de León
(USA)
Series: America’s Toxic Trade Revealed: US hazardous waste is sent to Mexico – where a ‘toxic cocktail’ of pollution emerges (January 14, 2025)
A trash can for the US’: anger in Mexico and Canada over toxic waste shipments (January 15, 2025)
Mysterious bags of ‘hazardous’ materials appeared in Mexico. Then we found more (March 21, 2025)
Ruchi Kumar
(India)
The Forced Sterilization of India’s Sugarcane Farmworkers
Anna Heikkinen
(Finland)
The last drops of our water’: how a mine left some of Peru’s poorest high and dry
Jacob Daniel Judah
(United Kingdom)
The Alaskan island on the front lines of the Arctic scramble
Stéphane Horel
(France)
Forever Lobbying Project / PFAS: The astronomical cost of depolluting Europe
Forever Lobbying Project / PFAS: How the chemical industry is derailing a ban on 'forever chemicals'
Forever Lobbying Project / The plastics lobby's disinformation campaign to defend PFAS
Alejandro Melgoza Rocha, Omar Sánchez de Tagle
(Mexico)
The wood mafia in the Mayan jungle
Oliver Milman
(USA)
This used to be a beautiful place’: how the US became the world’s biggest fossil fuel state
Sofia Quaglia
(Italy)
Operation Atacama: The $1m cactus heist that led to a smuggler's downfall
Isabelle Groc
(Canada)
The Magic in the Mud: Sandpipers’ Migration Superfood
Vince Beiser
(Canada)
A $60 Billion-a-Year Climate Solution Is Sitting in Our Junk Drawers
Oliver Laughland, Sara Sneath
(USA)
The huge US toxic fire shrouded in secrecy: ‘I taste oil in my mouth’ (9/9/2024)
Guardian investigation fuels class-action lawsuit against petro giant (1/27/2025)
Learn more about the shortlisted stories here