MONACO: 55th Television Festival

The Special AMADE Prize was awarded this year to the documentary by John IRVINE "The Desperate Struggle To Save Iraq's Yazidis", reporting the perilous rescue of Yezidi families from Iraq.

In August 2014, fleeing the advance of the Islamic State, 40,000 Yazidis, a Kurdish religious minority living in northern Iraq and practicing an ancestral religion prior to the birth of Islam, found themselves entrenched on the Mount Sinjar mountain without water or shelter, awaiting a fateful destiny.

The situation deeply affected the members of the AMADE jury, which presented its prize on Thursday evening at the closing of the 55th Monte-Carlo Television Festival.

ITN News British reporter, John IRVINE, was aboard an Iraqi army helicopter for a supply mission and found himself witnessing an unexpected emergency evacuation operation as the pilot, faced with the distress of these men, decided to take a risk and save as many women and children as possible.

At the awards ceremony, Mr Pieter BOGAARDT, President of the AMADE jury, wished to salute the courage and humanity of this pilot and to congratulate the reporter's great professionalism, who highlighted the tragic fate but also the great dignity of these families, for which the international community and NGOs, such as AMADE Mondiale, must mobilize.

AMADE, which has been working for more than 50 years towards the protection of the world's most vulnerable children, particularly in emergency and post-emergency situations, has been intervening in Syria for refugee children in Jordan since 2014 through the The Time To Act initiative initiated by the Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
Mr. Pieter BOGAARDT also took to the occasion to announce AMADE's decision to intervene in favor of migrant children and their families located a few kilometers from the Principality, in the municipality of Ventimiglia.