Zehra Abid

I am a humanitarian communications and advocacy professional with more than 15 years of experience across international media, global health, and crisis response. I began my career as a reporter and editor, and over time my work has evolved from covering crises to communicating and advocating around them.

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I was part of the launch team of The Express Tribune in 2009 and later helped launch the paper's Peshawar metropolitan section, which brought daily coverage from Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and Gilgit-Baltistan to a national audience. Over a decade in the field, I covered conflict, politics, and human rights, with my work appearing in Al Jazeera, Al Jazeera America, The Economist, The Christian Science Monitor, South China Morning Post, and Ms. magazine. I was also selected for international fellowships with The Sunday Times in Colombo and the Long Beach Press-Telegram in California through the International Center for Journalists.

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Over time, my work has moved from reporting on crises to communicating and advocating around them. Most recently, at the WHO Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean, I worked on communications for major humanitarian emergencies, including the crises in Gaza, Sudan, Lebanon, and Syria. My work has ranged from leadership speeches and press statements to communications that seek to bring attention to the human realities of conflict, displacement, and crisis.

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From 2019 to 2022, I was Visiting Faculty at Aga Khan University, where I taught a course on Media, State and Society. I have also worked on media and ethics trainings, including leading a citizen journalism programme that trained 200 women and men from under-reported, conflict-hit neighbourhoods in Karachi.

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I hold an MSc in Comparative Political Thought from SOAS, University of London, and studied Political Science and Public Administration at Middle East Technical University in Turkey.

Today, my work sits at the intersection of humanitarian communications, advocacy, health, human rights, and global affairs. I continue to write essays and am interested in the political and ethical questions that shape how we understand crises, how narratives are constructed, whose voices are heard, and how communication can help bring clarity, a sense of justice, and humanity to complex realities.