In 2019, journalist Izabella Evloeva, then aged 36, left Russia for what she thought would be a two-month break.

Three and a half years later, she has yet to return after being placed on a watch list for covering protests in Ingushetia on her news website Fortanga.

Imagine you’re the type of person who never gives up fighting for the truth. You receive the most prestigious award in your field, but you can’t receive it in person for no reason other than that you were born in occupied land and the occupying forces have issued a travel ban against you.

Ukrainian journalist Anna Babinets, 37, is used to controversy, and to being on the receiving end of threats. The investigative agency Slidstvo.info, that she co-founded ten years ago, specialises in investigating high-level crime and government corruption.

Vietnamese journalist Pham Doan Trang knew she would be arrested at some point, and even wrote a farewell letter, but she didn’t know when – until, on 6 October 2020, police turned up in the middle of the night at her flat in Ho Chi Minh City.

At the time of writing, 37-year-old investigative journalist Rana Ayyub is afraid to leave her Mumbai home for fear of being attacked by armed gangs or by the government whose agents sit and watch from nearby streets.

On a grey afternoon in Minsk in November 2020, journalists Katsiaryna Andreyeva and Daria Chultsova were filming from an apartment. It looked down onto a courtyard, colloquially known as the ‘Square of Change’, where hundreds were gathered to peacefully demonstrate and demand justice for the death of pro-democracy activist Raman Bandarenka in police custody.