Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson
Special correspondent Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson is based in Berlin. Her reports can be heard on NPR's award-winning programs, including Morning Edition and All Things Considered, and read at NPR.org. From 2012 until 2018 Nelson was NPR's bureau chief in Berlin. She won the ICFJ 2017 Excellence in International Reporting Award for her work in Central and Eastern Europe, North Africa, the Middle East and Afghanistan.
Nelson was also based in Cairo for NPR and covered the Arab World from the Middle East to North Africa during the Arab Spring. In 2006, Nelson opened NPR's first bureau in Kabul, from where she provided listeners in an in-depth sense of life inside Afghanistan, from the increase in suicide among women in a country that treats them as second class citizens to the growing interference of Iran and Pakistan in Afghan affairs. For her coverage of Afghanistan, she won a Peabody Award, Overseas Press Club Award, and the Gracie in 2010. She received the Elijah Parish Lovejoy Award from Colby College in 2011 for her coverage in the Middle East and Afghanistan.
Nelson spent 20 years as newspaper reporter, including as Knight Ridder's Middle East Bureau Chief. While at the Los Angeles Times, she was sent on extended assignment to Iran and Afghanistan following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. She spent three years an editor and reporter for Newsday and was part of the team that won the 1997 Pulitzer Prize for covering the crash of TWA Flight 800.
A graduate of the University of Maryland, Nelson speaks Farsi, Dari and German.
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The latest uprising in Iran is about much more than mandatory hijab. We've complied a list of books that offer insight into the lives of Iranian women and what is happening in their country. -
This week marks a year since the Taliban regained control of Afghanistan. But the Taliban hasn't succeeded in silencing Afghan women, whose voices ring out in two new and powerful collections. -
British Prime Minister Theresa May was urged to bring "new facts" to Wednesday's summit of E.U. leaders in Brussels. But U.K. ministers say the ball is the EU's court, so Brexit talks appear to be at stalemate as the clock ticks down.
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Foreign Ministers from the U.K., France and Germany, as well as the European Union's foreign policy chief, are meeting Iran's Foreign Minister in Brussels Tuesday to discuss ways to preserve the Iran nuclear deal despite threatened U.S. sanctions.
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A change of command ceremony at the U.S. European Command in Stuttgart, Germany, became a platform for the Pentagon chief and his top generals to lash out at Russian aggression.
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German Chancellor Angela Merkel will be in Washington, D.C., on Monday for talks with President Obama. The meeting could be a tense one, over differences in handling the crisis in Ukraine.
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The nation is the world's third-largest arms exporter, and many weapons go to countries with questionable human rights records. Sigmar Gabriel wants to change that — but not all Germans are on board. -
Europeans throw away about 90 million tons of food each year. A new German website aims to ratchet that number down a bit by connecting people with leftovers to spare with people who could use them. -
The Saudis are demanding that Yemen's president step aside after months of protest against his rule. Yet last month, the Saudis didn't stop Ali Abduallah Saleh from leaving Saudi Arabia, where he received extensive medical treatment, and returning to Yemen. -
The Saudis are demanding that Yemen's president step aside after months of protest against his rule. Yet last month, the Saudis didn't stop Ali Abduallah Saleh from leaving Saudi Arabia, where he received extensive medical treatment, and returning to Yemen.
