Ruth Sherlock
Ruth Sherlock is an International Correspondent with National Public Radio. She's based in Beirut and reports on Syria and other countries around the Middle East. She was previously the United States Editor for the Daily Telegraph, covering the 2016 US election. Before moving to the US in the spring of 2015, she was the Telegraph's Middle East correspondent.
Sherlock reported from almost every revolution and war of the Arab Spring. She lived in Libya for the duration of the conflict, reporting from opposition front lines. In late 2011 she travelled to Syria, going undercover in regime held areas to document the arrest and torture of antigovernment demonstrators. As the war began in earnest, she hired smugglers to cross into rebel held parts of Syria from Turkey and Lebanon. She also developed contacts on the regime side of the conflict, and was given rare access in government held areas.
Her Libya coverage won her the Young Journalist of the Year prize at British Press Awards. In 2014, she was shortlisted at the British Journalism Awards for her investigation into the Syrian regime's continued use of chemical weapons. She has twice been a finalist for the Gaby Rado Award with Amnesty International for reporting with a focus on human rights. With NPR, in 2020, her reporting for the Embedded podcast was shortlisted for the prestigious Livingston Award.
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"Hydroxychloroquine is included in the [Syrian] national case management guidelines for COVID-19," though there's no evidence that it's effective, a World Health Organization representative tells NPR. -
Even with stringent lockdowns, the coronavirus has spread through migrant communities in some Middle Eastern countries where foreign workers live in cramped quarters. -
From its seas, to rivers, to its air quality, Lebanon is ruining itself. Scientists say the country should be a cautionary tale of what happens when governments prioritize business over environment.
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An Austrian woman struggles to get her daughter out of Syria, where she went as a confused teen with her husband to live under ISIS.
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An oasis town in the country of Oman is famous for its tales of spirits and jinns — possibly a result of its history as a fortress town surrounded by dangerous desert.
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After objections by Christian leaders in Lebanon, organizers of a festival there canceled an upcoming appearance by Mashrou' Leila, a popular band with an openly gay lead singer.
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The narrow waterways of the Strait of Hormuz have recently been the scene of confrontation but they're also a highway for traders, smugglers and dolphins.
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Oman has emerged as a quiet facilitator of dialogue, including between Iran and the U.S. "We always keep a focus not on the negative, but on the positive," says Oman's incoming U.N. ambassador. -
Oman plays an important role in trying to bridge relations between the U.S. and Iran and its incoming ambassador to the United Nations says he still has hope conflict can be averted.
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President Bashar al-Assad has called on the millions of Syrians who've fled the brutal civil war to return home, but thousands who have come back end up imprisoned and often tortured.
