LiberPress Award 2016

Caddy Adzuba (Bukavu, 5 April 1981) is a lawyer, journalist, speaker and activist for the rights of women and children and press freedom in the Congo. She studied law at the Official University of Bukay. She has been threatened with death since she denounced the sexual violence suffered by women in her country, which has been at war since 1996. She has narrowly escaped two assassination attempts and has protection from the UN. She works at Radio Okapi in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a UN radio station. In 2014, she received the Prince of Asturias Concord Award. She has denounced the torture and rape of Congolese women and girls, and promotes their reintegration into society. When she comes home every night, after a day at Radio Okapi, she gives thanks for having survived one more day, without being killed or raped,

unlike what happens to so many women in her country. “At that moment I wonder if the next day I will still be alive and able to return to the radio station, because I don’t know if they will enter my house in the night to kill me”, she says. In 2009, she won the Julio Anguita Parrado International Award for Journalism, presented to her in Córdoba, “as a symbol of the courage of African women and journalists who daily risk their lives in Africa”. Adzuba presented the documentary PourQuoi?, a short film by Ouka Leele. She has also received the Prize of the Association of Women Journalists Club of 25 (in 2009), the International Freedom of the Press Award from the UNESCO Chair of Communication at the University of Málaga (in 2010) and the Woman of the Year Award from the Vall d’Aosta Regional Council in Italy (2012).