Arwa Damon
Damon in May 2012
Born	(1977-09-19)September 19, 1977 (age 48) Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.
Alma mater	Skidmore College (BA)
Occupation	Journalist
Relatives	Muhsin al-Barazi (grandfather) Azad Al-Barazi (cousin)

Arwa Damon (born September 19, 1977) is a Syrian - American journalist who was most recently a senior international correspondent forCNN, based inIstanbul. From 2003, she covered theMiddle East as afreelance journalist, before joining CNN in 2006. She is also president and founder of INARA,^[1] a humanitarian organization that provides medical treatment torefugee children from Syria. She left CNN in June 2022 to focus on her humanitarian work.^[2]

Damon was born inBoston on September 19, 1977^[3] to an American father andSyrian mother.^[2] She spent her early childhood years inWayland, Massachusetts.^[4] Damon is the granddaughter ofMuhsin al-Barazi, the formerPrime Minister of Syria, who was executed in the August 1949 Syrian coup d'état.^[5]

At the age of six, Damon and her family moved toMorocco, followed byIstanbul, Turkey three years later,^[2] where her father was a teacher andmiddle school director atRobert College.^[6]

Damon skipped sixth grade and graduated with honors fromRobert College at the age of 16. She then spent agap year with her aunt and uncle in Morocco, learningshow jumping, before moving to the U.S. to attendSkidmore College inSaratoga Springs,New York.^[5][7] She graduated with honors in 1999 with a major inFrench and a minor in international affairs.^[8]

Before becoming a reporter, Damon sold bathrobes and towels for an online textile company.^[3]

Damon decided to become a journalist after9/11, and moved toBaghdad prior to the beginning of theIraq War.^[5][9] She began her career at CameraPlanet, a supplier of media content for television newscasts.^[3] In 2004, she worked as a freelancer atCNN'sBaghdad bureau, joining the network as a correspondent in 2006.^[10]

Damon covered the Iraqielections of January 2005, theconstitutional referendum vote in October 2005, and theIraqi election of December 2005. She also reported on the trials and executions ofSaddam Hussein,Barzan Ibrahim Hassan al-Tikriti andAwad Hamed al-Bandar in January 2007.^[3][7]

During theSyrian civil war, Damon travelled multiple times to Syria and to refugee camps for Syrians.^[7] After the2012 Benghazi attack, she was one of the first journalists to arrive at the scene; she recovered slain AmbassadorJ. Christopher Stevens' personal diary.^[5]

In 2013, Damon followed an anti-poachingpark ranger unit throughOdzala National Park in theRepublic of the Congo. The feature was calledArwa Damon Investigates: Ivory War.^[11][7]

In April 2014, after theChibok schoolgirls kidnapping, she travelled toWest Africa and the islands ofLake Chad to follow the hunt for the terrorists.^[7]

Damon covered theInternational military intervention against ISIL on numerous occasions, dating to the beginning of the conflict.^[7]

Damon returned to Iraq in the second half of 2016 and covered theBattle of Mosul. Riding with a convoy consisting of press and Iraqi soldiers, she came under heavy fire by IS troops and was trapped. After 28 hours of entrenched fighting, reinforcements from the Iraqi military rescued them.^[7]

Damon travelled toThailand to cover theTham Luang cave rescue.^[7] In 2018, she accompanied aGreenpeace group toAntarctica and made afeature on it.^[12]

In 2019, Damon travelled toKathmandu inNepal to report on a spike in fatalities amongstMount Everest climbers.^[13][14] That year, she traveled again with Greenpeace, this time to theArctic. She reported about the significantloss of ice at the poles and their importance for the wholeecosystem of the earth.^[15]

She announced her departure from CNN in June 2022 to focus on her humanitarian work.^[2]

Damon is fluent inArabic,French andTurkish.^[7] She lives inIstanbul with her three pet cats.^[2]

In August 2014, Damon and CNN were sued by two employees of theU.S. Embassy in Baghdad, who said that on July 19, 2014, an intoxicated Damon had bitten them. Damon acknowledged the incident and apologized.^[16]

INARA (the International Network for Aid, Relief and Assistance) is ahumanitarian aid,501(c)(3),non-profit organization that was co-founded by Arwa Damon in 2015 inBeirut,Lebanon. INARA provides medical services for children who have been wounded in war zones. It also provides rehabilitation treatment for its beneficiaries.^[17] The organization focuses on refugee children fromSyria.^[18][19][20]

During theGaza war, Damon entered the Gaza Strip four times to lead charity work.^{[21][22][23][24][25][26]}

Damon won anInvestigative Reporters and Editors'IRE Award for her reporting of the Consulate attack in Benghazi, along with fellow photojournalist Sarmad Qaseera.^[27][10]

Damon was part of the CNN team who won the 2012Emmy Award forOutstanding Live Coverage of a Current News Story – Long Form (Revolution in Egypt: President Mubarak Steps Down).^[28] In 2014, she was awarded theCourage in Journalism Award given by theInternational Women's Media Foundation (IWMF).^[29]

Wikimedia Commons has media related toArwa Damon.

• Profile at CNN
• Arwa Damon atIMDb
• Arwa Damon talks in avideo on her motivation to cover the Syrian conflict.
• Anarticle in theWomen's Wear Daily magazine.
• Half hour featurevideo, in which Damon accompany's a Greenpeace crew with their ship to theAntarctic.
• Anarticle at the CNN website about her trip to the Arctic in 2019.

• 1977 births
• Living people
• 21st-century American journalists
• 21st-century American women writers
• American expatriates in Lebanon
• American expatriates in Morocco
• American expatriates in Turkey
• American people of Kurdish descent
• American people of Syrian descent
• American television reporters and correspondents
• American women war correspondents
• American war correspondents
• CNN people
• Humanitarian aid organizations
• News & Documentary Emmy Award winners
• People from Wayland, Massachusetts
• Robert College alumni
• Skidmore College alumni
• War correspondents of the Iraq War
• Women in the Iraq War
• Journalists from Boston
• Al-Barazi family

• Articles with short description
• Short description matches Wikidata
• Use mdy dates from September 2015
• Articles with hCards
• Commons category link is on Wikidata