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UNITED NATIONS – Kirubel Tadesse from Capital Newspaper, Ethiopia is among the four journalists selected as the 2011 Fellows by the board of the Dag Hammarskjöld Fund to come to New York this autumn to cover the 66th U.N. General Assembly annual debate. The four were chosen from among nearly 200 print, radio and television journalists who applied from Latin America, Africa and Asia.
Each year, the Dag Hammarskjöld Fund selects four mid-career journalists from the developing world to travel to New York for 10 weeks to cover the annual debate and to immerse in deliberations and decisions of the various U.N. agencies, funds and programs. As news budgets shrink and reporting restrictions are expanded, programs like the Dag Hammarskjöld fellowship bring additional international press coverage -- and scrutiny -- to the world body.
"These four young journalists come from very different cultures, but each has brought to his or her work a passion for accountability, a practical understanding of governance and development, and a keen talent for storytelling," said Dag Hammarskjöld Fund Chair Evelyn Leopold.
Kirubel Tadesse, 26, is a senior correspondent for government institutions as well as the African Union in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. He works for the Capital newspaper and covers major political news, economics and writes his own Internet blog. He says that UN activities, despite the presence of UN agencies, are largely under-reported in Ethiopia, and he hopes to change this during his stint at the world body. Mr. Tadesse has travelled to Poland, Turkey, France, Belgium, Britain, Japan and Kenya, sometimes at his own expense.
