Maggie O'Kane is a highly-acclaimed, well respected journalists and documentary filmmaker with a career spanning more than four decades. Renowned for fearless investigative reporting, she first established her reputation covering conflicts across Eastern Europe and the Balkans before becoming one of The Guardian's most acclaimed foreign correspondents. Her reporting from the Siege of Sarajevo during the Bosnian War earned widespread praise for its vivid, compassionate storytelling and won her numerous journalism awards, including UK Journalist of the Year and the Amnesty International Media Award.
After moving into documentary filmmaking, O'Kane became Editorial Director of Guardian Films, producing award-winning investigations into war crimes, human rights abuses, violence against women and global injustice. Her films have appeared on British and international broadcasters and have been recognised for combining rigorous journalism with powerful human stories.
In recent years, Maggie O'Kane has devoted much of her work to ending Female Genital Mutilation (FGM). She helped lead The Guardian's groundbreaking global campaign against FGM, using journalism not simply to report the issue but to amplify the voices of survivors and frontline campaigners. The initiative highlighted the experiences of women and girls across Africa, the Middle East and migrant communities worldwide, bringing international attention to the issue through documentaries, investigations and public campaigns.
Today she serves as Executive Director and co-founder of the Global Media Campaign to End FGM and is also Executive Director of Frontline Ending FGM. Working alongside grassroots organisations across multiple African countries, she champions locally led solutions, supports survivor networks, develops media campaigns and helps strengthen systems that protect girls at risk. Her approach has been widely recognised for placing affected communities, rather than outside organisations, at the centre of efforts to eradicate FGM.
Throughout her career, Maggie O'Kane has demonstrated how journalism can do more than inform. By exposing injustice, giving a platform to survivors and helping drive international action, she has shown the powerful role investigative reporting can play in advancing human rights. Her work on FGM stands as one of the most significant examples of journalism being used as a catalyst for lasting social change.
- Her list of professional accolades, and what she pioneers now.
- Her backstory and how it all began.
- Her story of being a "refugee from Belfast"
- A meaningful coincidence.
- The most dramatic situations she has been in.
- How she felt invincible.
- Why she was familiar with ethnic cleansing from her childhood, so could see through the lies in Yugoslavia.
- The most terrifying experience of her life.
- Why she should not have gone back to Belfast, but did 5 years later with her family.
- The miscarriages she had (5).
- Her dinner with Peter Mandelson.
- Her experience with Nelson Mandela.
- Her experience at a Buddhist retreat.
- An exclusive and deeply honest reveal.
- Her incredible work in the FGM world.
- ...and what needs to change...
- But how they are passionately campaigning with a beautiful, celebratory campaign.
- New laws being passed (albeit slowly)
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