The 9th edition of the Philippe Chaffanjon prize crowns two reports from the field. “Kidnapping in Haiti, trapped by fear”, a multimedia report by Milo Milfort which depicts the uncontrollable increase in the number of kidnappings in Haiti. And “Lebanon: the ordeal of African domestic workers”, a report by Noé Pignède on modern slavery in Lebanon.
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Noé Pignède, 27, lives in Lebanon. After covering the events in Iraq, he worked in Beirut for several French-speaking media: Radio France, Radio France Internationale, La Croix, Mediapart, and Swiss and Belgian channels. He won the 9th Philippe Chaffanjon Prize with the report Lebanon: the ordeal of African domestic workers broadcast on Radio France Internationale. It depicts a custom rooted in the reality of the country: home slaves, paid $200 a month.
In particular, Noé Pignède went to a hidden microphone in a specialized agency: “It’s a small agency. It looks like a store. It’s on the side of a highway, a few kilometers from Beirut. There are a lot of them in Lebanon. They are called recruitment agencies. catalog of girls from different countries, with their origin, their height, their weight, their age, the number of languages spoken. Depending on this, they will have different prices. An Asian, for example, she costs more than ‘an African. says Noé Pignède.
“The Lebanese come to choose these women from the catalog to work for them.”
Noah Pignedeon franceinfo
The journalist did not have to look far to come up with the idea for this report: “There is one in almost every family. So we ask ourselves the question. We talk to people who are embarrassed because the Lebanese are people who travel. They see that the system does not exist anywhere else. So when we ask them the question, they tell me: ‘yes, but I treat her well. Yes, but it’s like that here’. So I wanted to know exactly how it was going, how they were recruited, they were getting there too, what were all human smuggling rings.” concludes Noé Pignède.