Sheryl A. Mendez/Journalist Assistance Program Associate

Journalist Assistance Program Associate Sheryl A. Mendez is an editor and photojournalist who has worked in international hot spots such as Pakistan, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq. She has a master’s degree in International Affairs specializing in conflict and security from the New School for Social Research in New York.

Features & Analysis
Mukhtar Mohamed Hirabe was killed in 2009. (NUSOJ)

Evacuating Somali reporters who face unrelenting violence

Somalia was among the world’s deadliest countries for journalists in 2009, the year I began working with CPJ’s Journalist Assistance program. On June 7, two gunmen shot Mukhtar Mohamed Hirabe and Ahmed Omar Hashi, the director and news editor of the country’s leading independent station, Radio Shabelle. Hirabe died at the scene. Hashi barely survived…

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Features & Analysis
Five of 17 journalists released from Cuban prisons give a press conference on their arrival in Madrid in July. They have since told CPJ they suffered torture in jail. (AP/Paul White)

With 145 journalists behind bars, what’s in a number?

Today we released our annual census of imprisoned journalists around the world, citing 145 reporters, editors, and photojournalists behind bars on December 1, an increase of nine from 2009 figures. The tally begs the question, What’s in a number?

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Features & Analysis
A supporter of former presidential candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi holds an anti-Ahmadinejad newspaper during a Tehran rally in June 2009. (Morteza Nikoubazl/Reuters)

Living in limbo: The ongoing wait of journalists in exile

The e-mails started on July 15, 2009, and have continued ever since—pleas for help from Iranian journalists who fled their country often with little money and scarce provisions to northern Iraq, Turkey, Afghanistan, India, and a host of other locales around the world. Many lived in hiding throughout Iran for weeks or months before crossing perilous borders…

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