Paisley Dodds, a veteran investigative journalist with The Associated Press, has joined The New Humanitarian as our first investigative editor.

Paisley will build on our ongoing investigative work — ranging from reports on sexual exploitation and abuse to alleged  corruption in the UN resettlement process — and ramp up our coverage through developing co-reporting and distribution alliances and enhancing our use of data and other technology-assisted reporting methods.

“The humanitarian sector requires the same scrutiny journalists routinely give to politics, finance, and other multi-billion-dollar businesses,” executive editor Josephine Schmidt said. “As we fulfill our mission to put journalism at the service of some of the world’s most vulnerable people, Paisley will lead our work as a watchdog that helps to hold the sector to account —  to itself, to its donors, and to the millions of people it serves around the world.”

The bulk of Paisley’s 25-year journalism career has been with the AP. She joined the AP in 1994 in South Africa and later worked in the Miami, Little Rock, and Boston bureaus before joining the international desk in New York. From there, she was promoted to Caribbean news editor, leading coverage across the region and reporting on such stories as the rebellion that ousted Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and the U.S. prison camp at Guantanamo Bay. She then spent a decade as the AP’s London bureau chief while also working as a lead reporter on intelligence, security, and terrorism in Europe. Her last AP posting was as a member of the international investigations team, where she helped lead a series on U.N. sexual abuse and exploitation.

“I am thrilled to be joining The New Humanitarian and excited to be leading its investigations on the humanitarian sector – a vast area that includes the aid industry, governments, businesses and policy makers, and one that deserves even more scrutiny considering the scale and cost of global crises today.”

She has done numerous reporting stints internationally, including work in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Israel, South Sudan, and other conflict zones. She is the recipient of the Polk Award for Foreign Reporting and other awards for her exclusive investigative pieces about interrogation tactics at Guantanamo Bay, which involved a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit that won the AP access to thousands of detainee tribunal transcripts at the prison camp. She holds a master’s degree in International Relations at University of Cambridge.

Follow Paisley on Twitter or contact her via email: [email protected]

16 April 2019

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