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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Russian gas is expensive, so many Poles still rely on coal. Krakow is one of the most polluted cities in the EU's most polluted country. All that coal is akin to "smoking 2,000 cigarettes per year." -
Afghanistan is a mountainous land where mountain climbing is rare among men and virtually nonexistent among women. An American is now preparing young Afghan women to scale the country's highest peak. -
German courts have supported some types of assisted suicide, but the ruling party has vowed to stop doctors and organizations it says are profiting from the practice.
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Germany is one of the few EU countries that has welcomed Syrians fleeing civil war. But it offers refuge only to a few thousand out of the millions who need it. And it actually deported Syrian asylum-seekers last year because of treaty requirements. Still, Syrians are risking their lives to get there. -
The new Desert Flower Center offers treatment for the physical and psychological effects of female genital mutilation. But fear of alienation from their families and communities may keep some victims, mainly immigrants from Africa, from taking advantage of the center.
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Supporters of ousted President Mohammed Morsi clashed with authorities in one of the country's deadliest days in years. Though each side tells a different version of what caused the violence, analysts say it signals a change in how the military will handle the Muslim Brotherhood. -
A new exhibit in Berlin's Jewish Museum is intentionally provocative. The point, one curator says, is to "get people talking about how they perceive Jews, particularly in Germany today." At the center of the controversy is a display in which a Jewish person sits inside a glass showcase and answers questions from visitors. -
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.
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Many Afghans complain that the United States and other donor countries are spending billions of dollars creating a hodgepodge of expensive and often shoddy relief and development projects in dangerous areas. A U.N. official says it's time to "let the kid drive," allowing Afghans to direct aid projects.
