Corinne Dufka

Corinne Dufka is an American photojournalist, human rights researcher, criminal investigator, and social worker. She is the recipient of a MacArthur "genius grant" Fellowship.

Early life and education Dufka grew up in Utah and California received a bachelor's degree from San Francisco State University in 1979. In 1984, she graduated from the University of California, Berkeley with a master's degree in social work.

Career

Social work Following completion of her master's degree, Dufka worked as a humanitarian volunteer and social worker in Latin America. She volunteered with Nicaraguan refugees during the country's revolution, and with victims of the 1985 Mexico City earthquake. While in El Salvador, Dufka became close with local photojournalists, and was asked by the director of a local human rights organization to launch a program to document human rights abuses through photography. The director of the program was killed two weeks later, reportedly by death squads. Dufka's photos of his body ran in The New York Times, and she accepted the position.

In 1998, Dufka went to Nairobi, Kenya to cover the bombing of the American Embassy. She arrived hours after the blast, and was deeply frustrated by 'missing the scoop.' Later, upon watching the news coverage of the attack, Dufka realized that she had lost “compassion” for the subjects of her work, and resolved to end her career as a photojournalist.

Human rights In 1999, Dufka left Nairobi to open a field office for Human Rights Watch in Freetown, Sierra Leone, where she documented human rights abuses associated with the country's ongoing civil war. In 2002 she took a leave of absence to work as a criminal investigator for the Chief of Investigations and the Prosecutor for the United Nations' Special Court for Sierra Leone. Dufka returned to West Africa in 2005 to lead the Human Rights Watch field office in Dakar, Senegal until 2011.

Publications This Is War: Photographs from a Decade of Conflict. G, 2023. .

Awards 1996: 1st prize, Spot News stories, World Press Photo 1996: Robert Capa Gold Medal, Overseas Press Club of America 1997: International Women's Media Foundation Courage in Journalism Award 1997: Finalist, Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Photography 2003: MacArthur Fellows Program