Special Mention

All of the grantees in the program have described the experience as an exceptional and even life-changing opportunity. Two of the 2009 fellows won pretigious awards for work they completed under the fellowship. Diana Durán Núñez of Colombia's El Espectador won the 2010 Inter-American Press Association's Pedro Joaquín Chamorro Award for best article on inter-American relations. She focused a series of articles on the extradition of Colombian paramilitary leaders to the United States for drug trafficking charges and the impact these extraditions had on human rights investigations and trials underway in Colombia. Jamaican Observer reporter Ingrid Brown won a United Nations Population Fund 2009 Caribbean Population Platinum Award for her stories on the plight of undocumented Jamaican immigrants with HIV/AIDS who forego healthcare in the United States for fear of deportation.