Meeri Koutaniemi wins international photojournalism grant

Finnish photojournalist Meeri Koutaniemi has won the 2026 Canon Female Photojournalist Grant for her long-term work documenting female genital mutilation and activists fighting against it, Yle reports.

The grant, worth 8,000 euros, is awarded annually by Canon and the international Visa pour l’Image festival to support long-term documentary photography projects.

Koutaniemi plans to return to Kenya to meet activist Elizabeth Nkere, whom she first photographed 14 years ago in Narok. Nkere had escaped female genital mutilation and an arranged marriage at the age of nine. She later became a prominent community activist working to protect girls from mutilation and forced marriage, while promoting education and girls’ rights.

Nkere previously ran a shelter for girls who had escaped mutilation and child marriage. Forty girls lived there. She has since continued her work as an activist.

“She went from village to village, school to school, church to church and community to community, giving speeches about the dangers of mutilation and the harm caused by child marriage,” Koutaniemi said. “Through these speeches, Elizabeth began to change attitudes in local communities.”

Koutaniemi said Nkere had changed the opinions and attitudes of thousands, possibly tens of thousands, of people over the years.

Project will examine the effects of activism

The new project will examine how long-term activism affects individuals and communities. It will explore changes in attitudes towards girls’ self-determination and education, the opposition activists still face, and how one person’s work can lead to broad social change.

“Legal changes alone are not enough, and people from outside cannot simply say what is right and wrong. The forces for change emerge from within the culture,” Koutaniemi said.

The completed work will become part of Koutaniemi’s wider documentary project on female genital mutilation. Her goal is to produce an international exhibition and a visual non-fiction book.

Koutaniemi has documented the subject in 14 countries. She said female genital mutilation is not only a human rights issue in Africa, noting that she has also interviewed white Christian women who underwent the practice decades ago.

Koutaniemi, who comes from Kuusamo, Finland, will receive the grant at the Visa pour l’Image photojournalism festival in Perpignan, France, on September 4.

She said her home region remains important to her and provides strength and peace.

“The connection with nature that I developed as a child is always with me. The importance of roots cannot be emphasised enough,” Koutaniemi said.