A day after receiving Treaties of Nijmegen Medal the British founder of the international investigative journalism collective Bellingcat visited iHub.

He received this award for his innovative contribution to peace and human rights. The Bellingcat international network of journalists and citizen journalists has been innovatively using public data and images to uncover the truth about crimes, human rights violations, and abuses in conflicts and wars since 2014. Founder and citizen journalist Eliot Ward Higgins (born in 1979) previously wrote as a blogger and citizen investigative journalist under the pseudonym of Brown Moses. He mainly uses open data and social media channels for his investigations into abuses. In 2015, he received the Hanns Joachim Friedrichs Award, a German award for excellence in journalism.

For example, Higgins and Bellingcat investigated the wars in Syria and the Russo-Ukrainian war, the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, and the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal. Higgins first got widespread media attention for identifying weapons in videos of the Syrian conflict. Bellingcat worked with Transparency International to expose the misuse of Scottish Limited Partnerships for criminal money laundering schemes in the UK. Bellingcat also published a high-profile investigation into the murder of Óscar Pérez in Venezuela, together with Forensic Architecture.

Bellingcat shares this methodology with an ever-growing network of citizen journalists. Major institutions, such as the International Criminal Court and the UN’s International Independent and Impartial Mechanism on Syria, have also expressed interest in using open data for evidence.

Bellingcat’s innovative approach, using publicly available data and analysis by citizen journalists, is particularly important from the superficial of facts and images to evidence of crimes, conflict abuses and human rights violations. With their publications they contribute to international peace and security in a contemporary and innovative way.

With this prize, Radboud University, NXP and the municipality of Nijmegen show that in addition to appreciation for people who contribute to peace through public administration, literature and science, they also attach great value to icons of courageous and committed citizenship.

You can find more information about this on: https://www.intonijmegen.com/blijf-op-de-hoogte/nieuws/bellingcat-oprichter-krijgt-vrede-van-nijmegen-penning-2024-burgerjournalistiek-als-vernieuwende-bijdrage-aan-vrede-en-mensenrechten