Nairn Book & Arts Festival

Ishbel Matheson was the BBC’s East Africa correspondent until 2005.  For her coverage of the Darfur crisis in 2005, she won the Bayeaux Calvados war correspondent’s prize, and the United Nations Foreign Journalists’ Prize.  Her award was presented at the United Nations by Kofi Annan.  A former Rotary Scholar (awarded through Nairn Rotary Club) and Nairn Academy graduate, Ishbel is now Director of Media for Save the Children.

Return to Sudan:  in 2005, a peace deal was signed to bring an end to one of the world’s longest running conflicts – between North and South Sudan.  Ishbel Matheson reported on the war – and the peace accord – for the BBC.  Now five years on, she reflects on what peace has delivered to the ordinary people living in the South – one of the poorest and most under-developed places on earth.