Independent reporter Haroon Janjua from Pakistan secured the Elizabeth Neuffer Memorial Prize during the 2026 United Nations Correspondents Association Awards. He earned the recognition for his Deutsche Welle coverage focusing on Afghan exiles in Pakistan, which detailed the human toll of deportations during rising friction between Islamabad and the Taliban.
Entitled "Pakistan: Lives of exiled Afghans crushed in Taliban row" and released by Deutsche Welle, the winning piece follows Afghan households who spent decades establishing roots in Pakistan before facing a bleak future across the border.
Reporting out of Chaman located in southwestern Pakistan, Janjua captured households packing up sparse belongings, kids dealing with interrupted schooling, and women worrying about their rights and survival under Taliban governance.
The piece drew attention to the individual impact of the Pakistani government effort to remove undocumented Afghans, featuring individuals born in Pakistan who only know that country as home. The coverage also looked at rising frictions between Islamabad and the Taliban alongside humanitarian worries tied to the compulsory sending back of vulnerable households.
International focus on displaced Afghans grew through Janjua's work, which featured a medical student forced to halt her education and households facing the reality of rebuilding lives in an unfamiliar nation.
His articles have been published by media outlets including The New York Times, Deutsche Welle, The Times, The Sunday Times, The Guardian, The Observer, Fox News, BBC World Service, The Telegraph, Los Angeles Times, Nikkei Asia, South China Morning Post, and the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project.
Back in 2015, Janjua won three honors consisting of a UNCA Award, the IE Business School Prize for top journalism regarding the Asian economy, and the Global Media Award issued by The Population Institute. He earned a South Asian Journalists Association fellowship during 2017 and a Pulitzer Center grant in 2021.
Spanning over 15 years of journalism across Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iran, his portfolio includes coverage of the fall of Kabul, Afghan refugees, political crackdowns, religious persecution, women rights, and the humanitarian fallout of war throughout South Asia.
December brings the 2026 UNCA Awards Gala scheduled for New York, where United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres will be present as the chief guest.
