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UNITED NATIONS, New York—Dr. Babatunde Osotimehin, Executive Director of UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund, is a winner of the Population Institute’s 2011 Annual Global Media Awards for Excellence in Population Reporting. The awards, which are in their 32nd year, honour those who help raise public awareness of the challenges related to population and reproductive health.  The Population Institute is a major United States-based non-governmental organization founded in 1969 to promote universal access to family planning information, education and services.

Dr. Osotimehin received this distinction in the category of Best Print Editorial for an editorial that was published in a leading weekly journal, Science, in July 2011. The editorial, Population and Development, highlights how population affects our planet’s future, and explains challenges facing a world of 7 billion people in terms of poverty reduction, pollution, food, water scarcity and health. It also stresses that population initiatives that are grounded in human rights must be the central objective of national development policies that benefit families, communities and nations.

During the award ceremony that took place in New York yesterday, Dr. Osotimehin said he was receiving the award on behalf of UNFPA, and dedicated it to survivors of obstetric fistula. Other winners included an Ethiopian serial drama, a Kenyan news article series, a Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist, and the highly regarded American news programme, the Public Broadcasting Service’s NewsHour.

 For more information, please contact:

Abubakar Dungus: +1 212 297 5031, dungus@unfpa.org
Omar Gharzeddine: +1 212 297 5028, gharzeddine@unfpa.org