The 14th edition of the Carmignac Photojournalism Award is devoted to the condition of women and girls in Afghanistan.
Application is open to all photographers (press card not needed), of all nationalities. Participation can be individual or collaborative.
Selected by an international jury, the laureates receive a €50,000 grant to carry out a 6-month field report with the support of the Fondation Carmignac, which produces, upon their return, a travelling exhibition and the publication of a monograph.
The 14th edition of the Carmignac Photojournalism Award intends to support a project aimed at documenting in writing and images this “crime against humanity” by collecting legally admissible evidence.
Details about this year’s call are available on the official website.
On 26 May 2023, the NGO Amnesty International published jointly with the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) a report urging the International Criminal Court to qualify the abuses committed by the Taliban as a “crime against humanity” based on gender and sexuality, under article 7 of the Court’s Rome Statute.
“While the backlash against women’s and girls’ rights has unfolded in different countries and regions in recent years, nowhere else in the world has there been an attack as widespread, systematic and all-encompassing on the rights of women and girls as in Afghanistan. Every aspect of their lives is being restricted under the guise of morality and through the instrumentalization of religion.”*
Since the capture of Kabul by the Taliban in August 2021, the regime has grown stronger, establishing since November 2022 a rigorous application of Sharia law and silencing women, girls, as well as LGBTQIA + minorities.** Deprived of their fundamental rights, they are subjected to systematic discrimination – exclusion from school after primary school, from political and public life – and prevented from moving around, working and choosing their clothing. They are regularly arrested, tortured, threatened with death and imprisoned. The violence and discrimination perpetrated by the Taliban have been widely documented since the end of the 1990s and violate the human rights recognized in numerous international treaties, to which Afghanistan is a signatory.
About Carmignac Photojournalism Award
In 2009, while media and photojournalism faced an unprecedented crisis, Édouard Carmignac created the Carmignac Photojournalism Award in order to support photographers working in the field. Directed by Emeric Glayse, it annually funds the production of an investigative photo reportage into human rights violations globally and the related geostrategic issues.
Previous editions of the Carmignac Photojournalism Award have focused on: Gaza (Kai Wiedenhöfer); Pachtunistan (Massimo Berruti); Zimbabwe (Robin Hammond); Chechnya (Davide Monteleone); Iran (Newsha Tavakolian); Guyana (Christophe Gin); Libya (Narciso Contreras); Nepal (Lizzie Sadin); the Arctic (Kadir van Lohuizen and Yuri Kozyrev); the Amazon (Tommaso Protti) and the Democratic Republic of Congo (Finbarr O’Reilly).
Fondation Carmignac
The Fondation Carmignac, created in 2000, is a corporate foundation centred around two main focuses: an art collection of more than 300 works, and the Photojournalism Award which is issued annually. In partnership with the Fondation Carmignac, directed by Charles Carmignac, Villa Carmignac, an exhibition space open to the public, was created on the site of Porquerolles in order to exhibit the collection and to host cultural and artistic events.
