“Prisoners struggle with the feeling of being forgotten and being alone,” Mesfin Negash, program director at the Stockholm-based NGO Civil Rights Defenders, said in accepting the IPI World Press Freedom Hero Award on behalf of imprisoned Ethiopian journalist and blogger Eskinder Nega. “This is a way to let [Eskinder] know that we value his work”.

Mesfin, an Ethiopian journalist living in exile in Sweden, offered a final message of hope to all those behind bars in Africa for expressing their right to freedom of expression: “We remember you, we stand in solidarity with you and we value your work.”

The IPI World Press Freedom Hero Award was presented in cooperation with the Copenhagen-based International Media Support (IMS) at IPI’s 2017 World Congress in Hamburg, Germany in May.

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