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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As Denmark's politicians debate how many asylum seekers to let in, the country is working to better integrate the refugees already there.
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Ambivalence about refugees runs high in Denmark. Danes are critical of a new law requiring police to take cash and valuables from asylum seekers. But they're also nervous about rising refugee numbers. -
The Danish government is determined to persuade asylum seekers not to come to Denmark. Its plan to order police to seize cash and valuables from asylum seekers is sparking an outcry. -
Poland's new parliament has restricted the country's constitutional court and has put women undergoing fertilization treatments, in addition to others, in a tough position.
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In an effort to deter refugees, a controversial bill in Denmark calls for police to confiscate cash and valuables from arriving asylum seekers.
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North Africans are blamed for recent attacks on German women. Police are raiding their communities — including the largest one in Duesseldorf. Some longtime Moroccan residents are fighting back. -
Many of the city's residents already complain that the sounds are like a war zone on New Year's Eve. Imagine how that might affect asylum seekers who have just escaped from real wars.
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Germany is struggling with 1 million migrants who applied for asylum this year. Officials say the key to integration is education, and many schools have made accommodating migrants a priority. -
A majority Germans are afraid of what the coming year will bring, according to two new polls. That's a significant increase over last year, when less than a third of Germans surveyed felt that way.
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Months of training culminated with reaching the summit of a 16,500-foot peak, which they named. But there were frustrations and squabbles along the away, and uncertainties as they returned to Kabul.
