Overview

As Syria enters its sixth year of a war that has claimed over a quarter of a million lives, nearly five million Syrians have become refugees and another seven million are internally displaced. The war has driven more than half the country’s population from their homes.

EastWest Institute is hosting Young Professionals in Foreign Policy (YPFP) and Foreign Policy Interrupted (FPI) in a discussion on what has become the worst humanitarian disaster in modern history. Lauren Bohn, the GroundTruth Project’s Middle East correspondent, Deb Amos, veteran NPR international correspondent, Anna Day, an independent journalist who has reported inside Syria during the war, and Tania Karas, a Fulbright fellow focusing on the refugee crisis in Greece, will share their thoughts.

WHEN
Wednesday, June 29, 2016 | 6:00 p.m. - 8:00 p.m.

WHERE
East West Institute 
11 E. 26th St., 20th Fl. 
New York, NY 10010 

CONTACT
Anna Levinger · anna.levinger@ypfp.org

Panelist:

Deborah Amos covers the Middle East for NPR News. Her reports can be heard on NPR's award-winning Morning Edition, All Things Considered and Weekend Edition. Amos travels extensively across the Middle East covering a range of stories including the rise of well-educated Syria youth who are unqualified for jobs in a market-drive economy, a series focusing on the emerging power of Turkey and the plight of Iraqi refugees.

Anna Therese Day is an award-winning independent journalist and social media researcher. She is a 2013 Fulbright Fellow, a 2012 United Nations Press Fellow, and was named one of Google Zeitgeist’s top 30 Great Young Minds of Our Time in 2011. The Shorty Awards for Social Media recognized her as one of the Top 10 journalists of the Year at their 2013 and 2014 awards. Recently, she was named a national finalist for Running Start's Emerging Young Leader Awards and selected as one of Mic.com's #Mic50 Millennial Leaders 2015 list. 

Tania Karas is an independent, Athens-based journalist and 2015-16 U.S. Fulbright fellow covering Europe's refugee crisis in the context of Greece's financial crisis. Previously she was based in Istanbul. Tania has covered unaccompanied refugee minors; refugees' lack of access to medical care; increasingly restrictive family reunification policies around Europe; and how the EU's deal with Turkey to stop irregular migration falls short of human rights standards. 

Lauren Bohn is The GroundTruth Project’s inaugural Middle East correspondent, formerly a columnist for Foreign Policy magazine. She’s the co-founder of Foreign Policy Interrupted, a start-up incubator and fellowship program dedicated to changing the ratio and getting more women miked and bylined. She’s also the co-founder of SchoolCycle, a United Nations Foundation campaign in Malawi to provide bikes for adolescent girls to get to school.

Elmira Bayrasli has spent the past two decades working on foreign policy, international development, and with startups worldwide. In 2013, she co-founded Foreign Policy Interrupted, an education and media startup dedicated to increasing female foreign policy voices in the written and electronic press. Elmira is also a visiting fellow at the New America Foundation, and a lecturer at New York University. Her book, From the Other Side of the World: Extraordinary Entrepreneurs, Unlikely Places (2015) looks at the growth of innovation beyond Silicon Valley, focusing on talented individuals around the world who have overcome insurmountable obstacles to lead high-growth businesses.