Pulitzer Center Update

Carolyn Thompson Wins 2019 IRE Award for Reporting on South Sudanese Refugee Crisis

January 15, 2020 | Awards
By
Katie Brown
A refugee camp in northern Uganda where some fo the 2.3 million South Sudanese refugees are living. Image by Carolyn Thompson. Uganda, 2019.

A refugee camp in northern Uganda where some fo the 2.3 million South Sudanese refugees are living. Image by Carolyn Thompson. Uganda, 2019. 

In January 2020, Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE) announced the 2019 Philip Meyer Award winners. Pulitzer Center grantee, Carolyn Thompson, and a team of journalists won third place for their reporting on the displacement of South Sudanese people amidst civil war.

Their reporting project, Forced Out: Measuring the Scale of the Conflict in South Sudan, was published in Al Jazeera and features stories from refugees and surveys from displaced people fleeing ongoing conflict between government and opposition forces. IRE judges commented that the project was, "an outstanding example of a determined group of reporters using social science methods to get to the root causes of a refugee crisis, even with severely limited press freedom, possible government interference, and a scared population." 

The 2019 Philip Meyer Awards recognized sophisticated investigations that use empirical journalistic methods and social science tools to report with excellence and transparency.