19 Facts About Arwa Damon

Arwa Damon was born on September 19,1977 and is an American journalist who was most recently a senior international correspondent for CNN, based in Istanbul.

Arwa Damon is president and founder of INARA, a humanitarian organization that provides medical treatment to refugee children from Syria.

Arwa Damon is the granddaughter of Muhsin al-Barazi, the former Syrian Kurd Prime Minister of Syria, who was executed in the August 1949 Syrian coup d'etat.

At the age of six, Arwa Damon and her family moved to Morocco, followed by Istanbul, Turkey three years later, where her father was a teacher and middle school director at Robert College.

Arwa Damon skipped sixth grade and graduated with honors from Robert College at the age of 16.

Arwa Damon then spent a gap year with her aunt and uncle in Morocco, learning show jumping, before moving to the US to attend Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York.

Arwa Damon graduated with honors in 1999 with a double major in French and biology and a minor in international affairs.

Arwa Damon is fluent in Arabic, French, Turkish, and English, having grown up speaking all four languages.

Arwa Damon began her career at CameraPlanet, a supplier of media content for television newscasts, working to get correspondent Peter Arnett's team into pre-war Iraq.

Arwa Damon covered the Iraqi elections of January 2005, the constitutional referendum vote in October 2005, and the Iraqi election of December 2005.

Arwa Damon reported on the trials and executions of Saddam Hussein, Barzan Ibrahim Hassan al-Tikriti and Awad Hamed al-Bandar in January 2007.

In 2013, Arwa Damon followed an anti-poaching park ranger unit through Odzala National Park in the Republic of the Congo.

Arwa Damon covered the International military intervention against ISIL on numerous occasions, dating to the beginning of the conflict.

Arwa Damon returned to Iraq in the second half of 2016 and covered the Battle of Mosul.

Arwa Damon travelled to Thailand to cover the Tham Luang cave rescue.

In 2019 Arwa Damon travelled to Kathmandu in Nepal to report on a spike in fatalities amongst Mount Everest climbers.

Arwa Damon reported about the significant loss of ice at the poles and their importance for the whole ecosystem of the earth.

Arwa Damon announced her departure from CNN in June 2022, after an 18 year reporting career with the network.

Arwa Damon won an Investigative Reporters and Editors' IRE Award for her reporting of the Consulate attack in Benghazi, along with fellow photojournalist Sarmad Qaseera.