Giles Duley to Receive Tipperary Peace Award in September, Joining Mandela and Malala on Honours List
British documentary photographer and humanitarian Giles Duley has been named the recipient of the 2025 Tipperary International Peace Award, joining a list of previous recipients that includes Nelson Mandela, Mary Robinson, Ban Ki-moon, and Malala Yousafzai — an honour that recognises his two decades of work documenting the human cost of conflict and his extraordinary personal courage in continuing that work after losing both legs and his left arm to an improvised explosive device in Afghanistan in 2011.
Background
The Tipperary International Peace Award has been presented annually since 1984, when it was established to recognise individuals who embody the values of courage, compassion, and hope in the pursuit of peace. The award has a distinguished history, with recipients including some of the most significant figures in twentieth and twenty-first century peacemaking and humanitarian work. Its presentation in Tipperary — a county with no particular geopolitical significance but with a deep commitment to the values the award represents — is a reminder that the impulse towards peace is not the exclusive preserve of great powers or international institutions.
Giles Duley is the CEO and founder of the Legacy of War Foundation, an organisation that works to support communities recovering from the effects of armed conflict. He has spent more than two decades working in conflict zones including Afghanistan, Ukraine, Lebanon, and Rwanda, documenting the lives of civilians caught up in wars that are rarely of their making and that leave lasting physical and psychological scars on the communities they affect.
His work has been recognised with numerous awards and has been exhibited in galleries and institutions around the world. But it is his personal story — and the manner in which he has responded to the catastrophic injuries he sustained in Afghanistan — that has given him a particular moral authority and that has made him one of the most compelling advocates for the rights of conflict survivors.
Key Developments
Duley was on assignment in Afghanistan in 2011 when he stepped on an improvised explosive device, sustaining injuries that resulted in the amputation of both legs and his left arm. The injuries were life-threatening, and his survival was far from certain in the immediate aftermath of the explosion. Eighteen months later, he returned to work — not despite his injuries, but in some sense because of them, with a renewed sense of purpose and a deeper understanding of the experience of the conflict survivors he was documenting.
The Legacy of War Foundation, which he founded in the years following his recovery, works to ensure that the communities affected by conflict receive the long-term support they need to rebuild their lives. The organisation's work spans multiple countries and multiple types of conflict, from the ongoing war in Ukraine to the long aftermath of the civil wars in Lebanon and Rwanda. Duley's personal involvement in the foundation's work — including regular visits to the communities it supports — gives it a credibility and a human dimension that purely institutional organisations often lack.
Angelina Jolie, who has worked extensively on humanitarian issues and who has collaborated with Duley on several projects, was among those who praised his selection for the Tipperary award, describing him as someone who has "given everything in the service of bearing witness to the world's most vulnerable people." The award ceremony will take place on September 15 at the Great National Ballykisteen Hotel in Limerick Junction.
Why It Matters
The Tipperary Peace Award matters because it draws attention to work that is often conducted far from the public eye and that rarely receives the recognition it deserves. Documentary photography of the kind that Duley practises — intimate, long-term, focused on the human rather than the political — is one of the most important forms of journalism, but it is also one of the most difficult and dangerous. The award is a recognition not just of Duley's personal courage but of the value of the work itself.
The award also has a particular resonance in the context of Ireland's own experience of conflict. Tipperary, like many Irish counties, has its own history of political violence and its own tradition of peacemaking, and the decision to honour someone who has dedicated his life to documenting the human cost of war reflects a deep understanding of what that cost means.
The connection to Ireland is not merely ceremonial. Duley has spoken of the influence of Irish writers and artists on his own work, and of the particular quality of Irish engagement with questions of memory, loss, and reconciliation that he has encountered in his travels. The Tipperary award places his work in a tradition of Irish humanitarian engagement that stretches from the work of Mary Robinson at the United Nations to the peace process in Northern Ireland.
Local Impact
In Tipperary, the announcement of Duley's award has been welcomed by the Peace Convention and by the broader community that has supported the award since its foundation. The ceremony on September 15 at Ballykisteen is expected to attract a significant audience, with representatives from the diplomatic community, the arts, and civil society joining local residents to honour a recipient whose work speaks to values that are deeply held in the county. The award has always been as much about the community that presents it as about the individual who receives it, and the 2025 ceremony will be no exception.
What's Next
The award ceremony on September 15 will be the centrepiece of a series of events in Tipperary that will include an exhibition of Duley's photography and a series of public talks about his work and the broader issues of conflict, recovery, and peacebuilding that it addresses. The Legacy of War Foundation has indicated that it will use the occasion to raise awareness of its current projects in Ukraine and Lebanon, and to seek support from Irish donors and institutions for its ongoing work. Duley himself is expected to speak at the ceremony about the experience of documenting conflict and about the responsibility that comes with bearing witness to the world's most vulnerable people.
