European Press Prize
Nidžara Ahmetašević - European Press Prize
Nidžara Ahmetašević was selected for the 2022 European Press Prize shortlist for 'The world turned its back on Afghans a long time ago.'Read more about Nidžara Ahmetašević ›
Nidžara Ahmetašević
Editor, journalist, researcher
Bosnia and Herzegovina
I became a journalist during the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, in Sarajevo, under siege. My first reporting job was with Studio 99, a small radio station operating from the basement of a building in the city centre. Each day, to reach work, we had to run, hide, and cross one of the city’s main sniper zones. Once underground, we never knew how long a shift would last or what the next day in the besieged city would bring.
By the end of the war, I joined the weekly magazine Dani, one of the most important independent voices in Sarajevo. As the fighting waned, we could finally move around more freely. When the Peace Agreement was signed, journalists were among the first to travel through the devastated country, meeting people still raw with pain and loss. Those encounters shaped my career. For more than two decades, my work has centred on human rights violations, war crimes, post-war recovery, and other forms of large-scale injustice.
Over the years, I have worked in radio, television, print, and online journalism for a wide range of media. In the early 2000s, I joined a team of regional journalists who launched the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN) and its Justice Report section, where I worked as the editor for several years. Our work focused on war-crimes prosecution and regional efforts to confront the past. That regional focus later took me to Kosovo, where I worked with colleagues in Prishtina as the regional editor of the online magazine Kosovo 2.0.
My reporting has appeared in numerous regional and international outlets, including The New Yorker, The Guardian, Al Jazeera English, The New Humanitarian, The Independent, Der Spiegel, The Observer, Le Monde Diplomatique, Mladina, Rolling Stone, Portal Novosti, and others.
In December 2022, Rolling Stone published a groundbreaking year-long investigation that I co-reported with two colleagues into war crimes committed by a notorious Serbian death squad and the systemic failure to hold its members accountable. News organisations worldwide covered the investigation in more than a dozen languages. Our work received an award from the American Society of Magazine Editors and a Citation of Excellence from the Overseas Press Club.
Also in 2022, I was shortlisted for the European Press Prize's Public Discourse Award for a story about Afghan refugees in Europe. That same year, I received the Fetisov Journalism Award for Outstanding Contribution to Peace for reporting on the self-organised movement of women from Srebrenica.
In 2024, my book The Media as a Tool of International Intervention: House of Cards was published by Routledge.
I welcome opportunities to collaborate on new and meaningful projects.
Always on the move, always dreaming of somewhere else.
