Nina Donaghy (English) is an international TV news correspondent who recently returned to Oxford as a Fellow in Practice with the Ethics, Law, and Armed Conflict faculty at the Blavatnik School of Government. She has been working with international law experts to develop methods for the global media to contribute more robustly to war crimes investigations. Following her postgraduate study at Harvard University, Nina spent most of her career based in Washington, DC, covering diplomacy at the US Department of State, with long-term assignments in Jerusalem and the wider Middle East.
Nina made the first feature length news documentary that exposed the secret prisons and systematic torture system of the Syrian regime under Bashar al Assad. Her film includes exclusive access to the courageous covert - evidence gathering teams who have been smuggling evidence out of Syria since the start of the conflict in 2011 and tells the stories of the lawyers and survivors who are already prosecuting Syria's war criminals in real time.
The film features her Blavatnik School colleague Ambassador Stephen Rapp and his groundbreaking investigation team - who already hold evidence comparable to Nuremberg on the Syrian regime - right up to former President Assad. The Trial of Anwar Raslan was screened at The Frontline Club in London and can be viewed on Al Jazeera English.
In Nina’s own words:
I have been privileged to witness history - spending much of my career based in Washington DC at the US Department of State and covering four US Presidential elections. I have covered Jerusalem, the Palestinian territories, and the wider Middle East reporting both from DC and the region throughout my career.
I have reported on the Syrian conflict for the last 13 years - on the ground and from the United Nations - often when the atrocity crimes committed by the regime had been largely forgotten by the global media. Thank you to my managing editor, renowned US anchor David Shuster for keeping this story prominent in our international broadcasts from New York. I recently brought that body of work back to Oxford, with a conviction that the media has much to contribute to the prevention and prosecution of crimes against humanity and war crimes. Thank you to former UN Special Adviser for the Prevention of Genocide and current African Union Envoy, Adama Dieng for recommending me to Oxford to carry out this work and to Blavatnik's Executive Directors Federica D'Alessandra and Dapo Akande for taking a leap of faith and including a journalist as part of their Ethics, Law and Armed conflict team for the first time.
Journalists are among the first frontline professionals to witness atrocities, but there is a grey area regarding their ability to provide materials and testimony that meet the stringent level of probative value required for future trials. Members of the media rarely possess the legal and technical knowledge on how to behave at an active crime scene, how to preserve their reporting materials, or how to interact with survivors in ways that do not compromise evidence or case-building by professional investigators. War crimes investigations must ultimately be left to highly trained professionals - but journalists have an important role to play - as we have seen in Syria and in Ukraine not only to bear witness - but to expose those crimes on international television. Thank you to Al Jazeera English managing editor Giles Trendle, who took a keen interest in Blavatnik, commissioning a prime time special when the global media had lost focus on Syria.
It was an extraordinary privilege to work alongside President Obama's Ambassador at Large for War Crimes, former Rwanda Chief Prosecutor Stephen Rapp - who granted rare access to his Commission for International Justice and Accountability - working behind enemy lines in Syria and Ukraine. To also watch the work of the courageous German and Syrian human rights lawyers of ECCHR in Berlin - where under-reported Syria war crimes trials are already underway and to interview survivors of Assad's crimes - determined to see justice on an international scale. Current events make the prospect of justice for Syria a real possibility.
In the words of Irish poet Seamus Heaney: 'History says. Don't hope on this side of the grave...But then once in a lifetime. The longed - for tidal wave of justice can rise up and hope and history rhyme.' (The Cure at Troy)
None of this would have ever been possible without St Hilda's College. My years as an English Literature student at St Hilda's College were the most valuable of my life. I still vividly remember my tutorials with Dame Sally Mapstone, Dr Lyndall Gordon, and Professor Dan Carey—who made Sir Gawain, Emily Brontë, and Aphra Behn (to name just some of the company we kept during those years) compelling and relevant to me as a young woman beginning her career. The standards of editorial and analytical rigour that they instilled in me were vital skills for the world of journalism ahead.
When I heard the College planned to build a concert hall in memory of cellist Jacqueline du Pré, I was all in. Aside from du Pré's extraordinary talent, her personal story resonates with me to this day. She and her husband, conductor Daniel Barenboim, saw music as a reminder of common humanity. Accordingly, Barenboim and Edward Said co-founded the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra for musicians from Israel, Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Jordan, and Iran, who continue to perform. I also felt that such a young talent, interrupted by illness, should be remembered. Cue a rather ambitious fundraising concert featuring the musical talent of St Hilda’s, a ballet performance by Dr Susan Jones, and a cappella from The Magdalen Madrigals. I have to thank my parents at this point for paying for my grand piano.
I have carried the lessons, values, and freedom of thought that St Hilda’s instilled in me throughout my career. The College and my tutors fostered the imagination and independence necessary to build a career in the United States.
My late father was a London based BBC News executive. It would have been very easy to rely on him - but I chose to attend Harvard then onto Washington DC, gaining US citizenship through my work at Reuters, BBC Washington, Fox News then to international networks and Al Jazeera. Looking back it was a rather bold enterprise with zero contacts nor family in the United States.
There is often an assumption that 'academic' work is at a distance from the 'real' world. My experience is the opposite.
My time as Fellow led to working on The Murad Code - speaking alongside Nadia Murad, Olena Zelenska, HRH the Duchess of Edinburgh and new Oxford Chancellor William Hague - at the UK Foreign Office Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict conference and to working with BBC News and other broadcast outlets on Ukraine.
It was a pleasure also to contribute to a fun class for students on Reporting on the State Department, joined by my former colleague and friend Philippe Reines, Secretary Clinton's long-time spokesman and media adviser.
During the pandemic I originated a filmmaking program for young displaced Syrians in Amman for Belfast charity Cinemagic - supported by the Irish Foreign ministry and the Jordanian Royal Family. The first film made by these incredible young people, 'Abia' - won best foreign film at the British Film Awards and was screened at the United Nations for International Women's Day in 2023.
My advice to St Hilda’s students is to keep your academic life alive throughout your professional career, try to ‘give back’ when you can, and bear in mind the College motto:
Non Frustra Vixi— ‘I lived not in vain’.