Bilan Media Recognized for Empowering Women Journalists in Challenging Somalia

𝐍𝐚𝐢𝐫𝐨𝐛𝐢 – Bilan Media, Somalia’s first women-only media organisation and newsroom, which aims to challenge gendered threats against women in journalism, as well as covering under-reported issues. 

Bilan has been listed along people carrying out courageous, high-impact and determined journalism that exposes censorship and threats to free expression.

Bilan focuses on stories that are not represented in the broader media coverage in Somalia.

These include stories about people living with HIV/AIDS, girls who have recently undergone Female Genital Mutilation (FGM); orphans who were abandoned when their orphanage closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic only to return with babies of their own after being raped or forced into temporary marriages; female opioid addicts; the mistreatment of people living with albinism; underage girls sold into marriage and young children forced into hard labour to earn money for their families.

It is incredibly dangerous to be a journalist in Somalia. In 2022, Somalia topped the Committee to Protect Journalists’ Global Impunity Index for the eighth year running.

Journalists are a specific target of militant Islamist groups, especially Al Shabaab, and are regularly shot, imprisoned and physically harmed by the authorities and other powerful groups.

Women face a range of other significant threats that prevent many from being able to work safely.

In a society where women are marginalised and in a country where huge swathes of territory are controlled by groups linked to Al Qaeda and Islamic State, Bilan Media believed the only way female journalists can fight censorship and find a degree of freedom of expression was to set up the country’s only all-women media house.

In addition to distributing their films and reports on Somali TV, radio and websites, they have established partnerships with international media outlets, such as The Guardian, BBC and El Pais.  

As a career for women in Somalia, journalism is considered to be “the bottom of the pile”.

This perception shaped how Bilan approached the type of journalism they focused on.

In order to reduce verbal and sexual harassment and the threat of physical attack, Bilan decided to work as “Mobile Journalists” where they use mobile phones and other small equipment for their reporting so they are less visible to a hostile public and could escape the scene quickly if needed.

The organization has been listed along Mohammed Zubair (India) and Mortaza Behboudi (Afghanistan) for this years award.

Mr. Zubeir is the founder of AltNews.in, a portal dedicated to busting fake news to address flaws in the Indian media ecosystem, such as overt political pressure on media outlets and opaque methods by which government funding was awarded to media outlets.

Mr. Behboudi, the other contender for the prize is the co-founder Guiti News, the first refugee and French-led news media in France, for which he was coined one of Forbes 30 under 30 in the media category.
 
Since the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, Behboudi had been travelling back to Afghanistan every month to work with different media outlets, such as Business Insider, France 2, TV5 Monde, France 24, Liberation, La Croix, and many more.
 
On 7 January 2023, members of the Taliban’s General Directorate of Intelligence (GDI) detained Behboudi in Kabul. According to CPJ, Behboudi was detained in the GDI’s headquarters in Kabul.

On 6 February Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid confirmed to Voice of America that Behboudi was detained by the GDI, saying that details of his case could not be made public “but he is fine and he was treated well.”