A special National Geographic online story about conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is among the winners of this year's George Polk awards, among the most prestigious in journalism.

James Verini's 2014 article "Should the United Nations Wage War to Keep Peace?" earned the 66th annual George Polk Award for Magazine Reporting on Sunday, when the prizes were announced by Long Island University in New York, which administers the awards.

The judges called Verini's work "a riveting and lavishly illustrated 11,000-word narrative."

"Verini spent a year exploring the seeming futility of the [United Nations'] intervention in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a sprawling nation wracked by decades of civil war," the judges added. "He examined the implications