Webinar: Digging into Disappearances

Save the date: 17 September 2020

Published on August 24, 2020

The last in the series of four webinars, organized in partnership with the Global Investigative Journalism Network will take place on Thursday, 17 September at 15:00 CEST. This time, four senior journalists who have investigated notable missing persons cases related to criminal organizations and criminal conduct will do a deep dive into specific cases in Mexico and the Philippines, and share their tips and strategies.

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In 2020, the Resilience Fund launched its first Fellowship to support multi-disciplinary transnational collaboration among individuals building resilience to organized crime at the local level around a global theme.

The global theme this year is disappearances, which offers an opportunity to understand this phenomenon and its relationship to organized crime.

Millions of people go missing every year, according to the International Commission on Missing People, and organized crime is involved in many of these cases. “Disappearances” are today a key tool of criminal organizations, which have become increasingly transnational, network-based, and integrated into local economies.

The Global Investigative Journalism Network is an international association of journalism organizations that support the training and sharing of information among different stakeholders—with special attention to those from repressive regimes and marginalized communities.

Speakers:

Alejandra Xanic is a Mexican investigative journalist and one of the founders of Quinto Elemento Lab (Fifth Element Lab) which works with and mentors Mexican journalists. She was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in the Investigative Journalism category for her joint work with David Barstow on Wal-Mart’s use of multi-million dollar bribes in Mexico, published in The New York Times in 2012. Xanic has covered topics related to drug trafficking, state corruption, political assassination and human rights.

Ginger Thompson, is the Deputy Managing Director and Chief of Correspondents at Pro Publica. She is a multi-award winning journalist with an in-depth understanding of the U.S.- Mexico border and the communities on both sides. She has also reported on the consequences of U.S. policies in Latin America, particularly those involving immigration and the fight against drug cartels. Thompson worked with Alejandra Xanic on the investigation into a mass disappearance in the Mexican town of Allende, linked to drug cartels.

Clare Baldwin is an American journalist. As a special correspondent for Reuters in the Philippines, she won a Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting in 2018, along with colleagues Andrew Marshall and Manuel Mogato, for reporting on the killing campaign behind Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs. In 2019, she was part of the Reuters staff awarded the Pulitzer for a series of articles exposing the military units responsible for the expulsion and murder of Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar.

Andrew Marshall is a British journalist and author. In 2012 he joined Reuters news agency as Southeast Asia Special Correspondent. He won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting along with colleague Jason Szep for reporting on the violent persecution of the Rohingya, a Muslim minority in Myanmar. He won his second Pulitzer, the 2018 prize, also for international reporting, along with Clare Baldwin and Manuel Mogato, for exposing the methods of police killing squads in Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs.

This webinar will be moderated by David E. Kaplan, Executive Director of the Global Investigative Journalism Network. Kaplan investigated criminal organizations for over 20 years for major media. His books include Yakuza, on the Japanese mafia, and Fires of the Dragon, on the murder of Chinese-American journalist Henry Liu.

Watch the first webinar: