On 26 May 2023, the NGO Amnesty International published jointly with the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) a report urging the International Criminal Court to qualify the abuses committed by the Taliban as a “crime against humanity” based on gender and sexuality, under article 7 of the Court’s Rome Statute.

“While the backlash against women’s and girls’ rights has unfolded in different countries and regions in recent years, nowhere else in the world has there been an attack as widespread, systematic and all-encompassing on the rights of women and girls as in Afghanistan. Every aspect of their lives is being restricted under the guise of morality and through the instrumentalization of religion.”

Since the capture of Kabul by the Taliban in August 2021, the regime has grown stronger, establishing since November 2022 a rigorous application of Sharia law and silencing women, girls, as well as LGBTQIA + minorities. Deprived of their fundamental rights, they are subjected to systematic discrimination – exclusion from school after primary school, from political and public life – and prevented from moving around, working and choosing their clothing. They are regularly arrested, tortured, threatened with death and imprisoned. The violence and discrimination perpetrated by the Taliban have been widely documented since the end of the 1990s and violate the human rights recognized in numerous international treaties, to which Afghanistan is a signatory.

The 14th edition of the Carmignac Photojournalism Award intends to support a project aimed at documenting in writing and images this “crime against humanity” by collecting legally admissible evidence.

The jury will meet in November 2023 to designate the laureate. The report will take place from January to June 2024, and will be the subject of a monograph and an exhibition at the end of 2024.

The selection of the laureate will take place in two stages:
1 – The pre-jury, made up of directors of photography and curators, has the task of selecting between 12 and 15 proposals from those received.
2 – The jury, consisting of specialists in photography and in the given theme, choose a winning project. At the end of the selection process, the jury meets the winning photographer, in order to talk to him or her and, if necessary, to provide the support he or she will need throughout the duration of their project – from the preparation of the reportage to its final exhibition.

The photographers will need to submit their dossier before Friday, October 6th 2023 at 11:59 PM (GMT).
Submission is entirely free of charge.

The Carmignac Photojournalism Award is open to all photographers, of all nationalities. Participation can be individual or collaborative.

The Fondation Carmignac provides the laureate with financial and human resources to carry out their project and produces both a monograph and a traveling exhibition, aiming to shed light on the crises and challenges which the contemporary world is facing. At the end of each edition, four photographs bequeathed by the laureates are included in the Carmignac collection.

Selected by an international jury, the laureates receive a €50,000 grant to carry out a 6-month field report with the support of the Fondation Carmignac, which produces, upon their return, a travelling exhibition and the publication of a monograph.

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