By IANS
United Nations : A HIV-positive couple in India, an indigenous group in Malaysia and nomadic children in China are the focus of stories that have won United Nations prizes for media.
Rupa Jha of BBC World Service Trust, India, who follows a HIV-positive couple in India as they challenge the daily prejudices, won the runner-up award with a cash prize of $2,000 in radio category.
Depicting the quest to meet UN-backed development goals in the Asia-Pacific region, the awards were announced Tuesday in Almaty, Kazakhstan, during the annual session of the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP), according to UN news centre.
A Malaysian and two Chinese journalists won the top three of the first Asia-Pacific Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) for stories on the individual dimension of the international goals to cut extreme deprivation and boost basic services by 2015 received their awards with a cash prize of $7,000. The runners-up awards were won by journalists from India, Bangladesh and the Philippines.
"Through the powerful media of TV, radio, print and the internet, journalists can focus attention on the human face behind the MDGs," said Kim Hak-Su, executive secretary of UNESCAP giving the awards at a ceremony attended by representatives of the 62-member governments.
"They also have an important role in holding governments accountable to the pledges they made in the Millennium Declaration – the pledge to free the world from dehumanising condition of poverty, hunger and illiteracy," he added.
More than 100 entries from 23 countries were judged by an international panel of media professionals.