Rupert Cornwell Prize 2019: Lemma Shehadi named this year's winner

The annual award is aimed at younger journalists at the start of their careers

(Lemma Shehadi)

The second Rupert Cornwell Prize for Journalism has been won by Lemma Shehadi, a writer and communications consultant focusing on culture, conflict and development.

The annual award is aimed at younger journalists towards the start of their careers and Ms Shehadi, 29, greatly impressed the panel of judges with her proposal for a series of features on the future of the Yazidi people in the Caucasus after expulsion from their heartland in northern Iraq by Isis in 2014.

“I am delighted to be part of a project honouring the memory and work of a great journalist, Rupert Cornwell. It is a tremendous opportunity and I hope I can live up to his journalistic dedication and reputation,” Ms Shehadi said.

The £5,000 prize is supported by The Independent and will be awarded by the Rupert Cornwell Trust.

On behalf of the judges and the trust, Cornwell’s widow Susan, US congressional correspondent for Reuters, praised Ms Shehadi’s “original and compelling” proposal.

“We were moved by her pitch offering a deeply-reported look at the future of a persecuted and stateless minority. We were also impressed by her previous articles that blended news with cultural narratives from Lebanon to Sri Lanka and Nepal, and her persistence; Lemma has made strong applications for the award two years in a row. She clearly is a highly-motivated journalist with a bright future.”

In a competition which attracted a generally very high standard of entries, the judges also highly commended Amanda Coakley, Thomas Graham and Felix Light for their proposals, which “showed great potential”.

The Rupert Cornwell Award was established in memory of the distinguished foreign correspondent and writer who died two years ago. It is designed to fund a suitable journalistic project in one of the broad regions Cornwell covered – North America, Europe and the former Soviet Union.

It also commemorates one of the great foreign correspondents of modern times.

He embodied the spirit of the newly launched Independent in 1986, and he remained one of its the wisest and most eloquent voices until his death in 2017, aged 71, still writing for the title.

From his earliest reports for the Financial Times from Rome to chronicling the fall of the USSR to his last pieces on the Trump phenomenon, he remained a source of inspiration for all of his colleagues, and now for a new generation of writers as well.