2018 Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award

Young men crowd onto the back of an old Mercedes truck leaving for the far north of Niger from Agadez on May 22, 2017. A historic smuggling hub through which as many as 13,000 migrants passed each month in 2016, Agadez, Niger has been the site of a recent crackdown on human smugglers after the E.U. struck a $635 million deal with Nigerian authorities to keep a lid on migration. Now the route across the Sahara ? already among the most deadly on Earth ?is more treacherous than ever.

Nichole Sobecki has received the 2018 Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award in the New Media category for her work on the Foreign Policy series “Europe Slams Its Gates.”

The five-part series of photos and reporting on the millions of people who will be streaming from Africa to Europe in the coming decade, and the efforts by governments to stop them, was supported by Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.