Raksha Kumar

India

Raksha Kumar is a freelance journalist, with a specific focus on human rights and land and forest rights. Since 2011, she has reported from 12 countries and 100 districts in India for outlets such as The New York Times, BBC, The Guardian, TIME, Foreign Policy, South China Morning Post, and The Hindu. Kumar is a journalist with National Public Radio in Mumbai and a regular contributor to the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, Oxford University. She has won several national and international awards for her work. In December 2019, she was recognized for excellence in gender sensitive reporting by UNFPA. She has spent the last four years producing academic reports on media freedoms, sustainable financial models for journalism, and online hate and disinformation for different international organisations such as the Committee to Protect Journalists, PEN International, and the International Federation of Journalists. With a Fulbright scholarship for leadership development, she graduated from the journalism school at Columbia University and holds a postgraduate diploma in human rights law. As a Scripps Howard fellow, she reported from Israel and the West Bank. She continues to report on Kashmir, known as the world's most militarised zone. She is also a documentary filmmaker and a Chevening fellow.