Zeinab Mohammed Salih

Salih is a 2026 ICFJ Knight International Journalism Award winner.

Zeinab Mohammed Salih is a Sudanese freelance journalist whose on-the-ground reporting of Sudan's most recent civil war is providing rare, independent documentation of one of the world's deadliest and least reported-on humanitarian crises. Her work, published in The Guardian, the Financial Times, The Economist, the BBC and more, has helped bring international attention to the atrocities of the conflict.

Salih is often one of the first journalists to reach some of the most inaccessible areas of the war, putting herself in great danger. After the start of the conflict in 2023, she became one of the first journalists to file for major Western media outlets from inside Khartoum. While most international correspondents were forced to evacuate, she remained. As the war spread to Darfur, she was the first journalist to provide independent verification of the Geneina massacres that killed over 10,000 people and to enter the besieged city of El Fasher three times.

Salih’s articles have reached humanitarian actors and policymakers, along with the public. After she reported on the scale of the crisis in Tawila, where thousands of people were dying from hunger and disease after fleeing the siege of El Fasher, international aid organizations such as the World Food Programme and Médecins Sans Frontières began deploying to the area, contacting Salih for logistical and security information. Salih’s reporting has also become an informal reference for officials shaping international responses to the war.

Salih covers all sides of the conflict, documenting abuses committed by both the Rapid Support Forces and the Sudanese Armed Forces, traveling to war zones without embedding with either faction. Much of her reporting centers on those most affected by the war, such as women, children, displaced communities and civilians facing sexual violence, famine and ethnic killings. 

When Sudan's current war first broke out, Salih declined an offer to be evacuated, and stayed in her home country to continue reporting, at great risk to her safety. After that, she reported under sustained shelling, air raids and threats for years. Earlier in her career, in 2010 and 2011, Salih was arrested twice by the Bashir government's intelligence services and kidnapped by a military-affiliated militia.

Coming from outside traditional elite circles, Salih was raised on the outskirts of Khartoum in a community without access to basic services. She began her journalism career working for Arabic-language newspapers, covering domestic politics, governance and armed conflict, including the 2018-19 revolution. After receiving a scholarship, she earned graduate degrees in the UK, before returning home to continue reporting. Salih co-founded the Sudanese Journalists Network, which has supported reporters throughout the war. She was a 2024-25 fellow at the Wilson Center and a Pulitzer Center fellow in 2025.