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Malia Politzer is the executive editor of piqd.com, and an award-winning long-form journalist based out of Spain. She specializes in reporting on migration, international development, human rights issues and investigative reporting.
Originally from California, she's lived in China, Spain, Mexico and India, and reported from various countries in Africa, Europe and the Middle East. Her primary beats relate to immigration, economics and international development. She has published articles in Huffington Post Highline, The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, Vogue India, Mint, Far Eastern Economic Review, Foreign Policy, Reason Magazine, and the Phoenix New Times. She is also a regular contributor to Devex.
Her Huffington Post Highline series, "The 21st Century Gold Rush" won awards from the National Association of Magazine Editors, Overseas Press Club, and American Society of Newspaper Editors. She's also won multiple awards for feature writing in India and the United States.
Her reporting has been supported by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, The Institute For Current World Affairs, and the Global Migration Grant.
Degrees include a BA from Hampshire College and MS from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, where was a Stabile Fellow at the Center for Investigative Journalism.
ICIJ Exposé Into World Bank Abuses Reveals The Darker Side Of Development
In this Piqd, I'm not just flagging one article, but an entire series. It's definitely a commitment - but one that's well worth taking the time to read.
Titled Evicted and Abandoned, the International Consortium for Investigative Journalism (ICIJ) series reveals how thousands of people in countries all around the world - from Honduras, to Indonesia, Tanzania to Ethiopia - are being violently displaced from their land to make way for World Bank projects.
In total, reporters found that World Bank projects "physically or economically displaced" more than 3.4 million people over the past decade. They also revealed that both the World Bank and it's financial arm, the International Finance Corporation, are directly responsible for bankrolling companies and governments with a history of human rights abuses including rape, murder and torture - and sometimes even continued to finance them after evidence of abuses became public.
Additionally, they found that the World Bank routinely "failed to live up to its own policies to protect people harmed by projects it finances", at times even issuing official waivers to companies excusing them from following protocols that were established to ensure that human rights violations would not take place.
The series - which includes a number of articles, videos and interactive graphics drawing 10 years of resettlement data in 120 - builds a strong and damning case. One can only hope that it will also lead to concrete change.
