Pakistani Journalist Wins Top UN Award - ProPakistani

Pakistani independent journalist Haroon Janjua has won the Elizabeth Neuffer Memorial Prize at the 2026 United Nations Correspondents Association (UNCA) Awards for his reporting for Deutsche Welle (DW) on the plight of Afghan exiles in Pakistan, documenting the human cost of deportations amid escalating tensions between Islamabad and the Taliban.

His award-winning report, “Pakistan: Lives of exiled Afghans crushed in Taliban row,” published by DW, tells the stories of Afghan families who spent decades building lives in Pakistan but now face an uncertain future across the border.

Reporting from Chaman in southwestern Pakistan, Janjua documented families preparing to leave their homes with only a few belongings, children whose education was being disrupted, and women facing uncertainty about their rights and future under Taliban rule.

The report highlighted the personal consequences of Pakistan’s campaign to expel undocumented Afghans, including people born in Pakistan who have never known another home. It also examined the growing tensions between Pakistan and the Taliban and the humanitarian concerns surrounding the forced return of vulnerable families.

Janjua’s reporting brought international attention to the experiences of displaced Afghans, including a medical student forced to abandon her studies and families confronting the prospect of starting over in an unfamiliar country.

His work has appeared in The New York Times, Deutsche Welle (DW), 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 (OCCRP), among other international publications.

Janjua received three awards in 2015: a UNCA Award, the IE Business School Prize for the best journalistic work on the Asian economy, and the Global Media Award from The Population Institute. He received a South Asian Journalists Association fellowship in 2017 and a Pulitzer Center grant in 2021.

With more than 15 years of reporting experience across Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran, his work has covered the fall of Kabul, Afghan refugees, political repression, religious persecution, women’s rights and the humanitarian consequences of conflict across South Asia.

The 2026 UNCA Awards Gala will take place in New York in December, with United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres attending as chief guest.

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