Winner of the award of UN Women and the Georgian Charter of Journalistic Ethics revealed

Promoting state services and raising public awareness about them play one of the most critical roles in the fight against violence against women. Journalists can make a significant contribution to this process by showing their interest in the respective issue and reporting about this topic with high professional and ethical standards.

Eka Kevanishvili, a reporter at Radio Liberty’s Tbilisi Bureau who has been working on women’s rights and gender equality for years, laid a special emphasis on state services when writing an article about the violence against women. The piece “Stories from the Women’s Shelter” tells the stories of women survivors who have experienced violence and, with this background, provides exhaustive information to the reader about the hotline 116 006 and the services of shelters and crisis centres. The article is a certain kind of guide for women and girls who are the victims of violence and for those who are aware of such incidents but do not know what to do.

Communicating crucial and important information through creative ways, a distinctive style of narration, a gender-sensitive approach and adherence to ethical standards were the evaluation criteria based on which Ms. Kevanishvili’s work received the award, established by UN Women and the Georgian Charter of Journalistic Ethics for reporting about women’s rights and gender equality.

“This topic does not have just one facet only,” Ms. Kevanishvili said after receiving the award. “This time, my goal was to inform. I wanted to talk about what is happening at the shelter, [and] to say that there is a hotline. There are many cases described in the article, and it can truly become motivation to someone not to tolerate [violence] but rather to call this number.”

The annual prize for journalists, which was instituted for covering women’s rights and gender equality, was awarded for the third time within the framework of the Memorandum of Understanding between UN Women and the Georgian Charter of Journalistic Ethics. The annual initiative aims to support gender-sensitive coverage by promoting and recognizing contributions made by the media.

The collaboration between UN Women and the Georgian Charter of Journalistic Ethics is part of the project “Ending Violence against Women and Girls in Georgia”, implemented by UN Women and UNFPA with the support of the European Union.