Lyse Doucet is an award-winning Canadian journalist who is the BBC’s Chief International Correspondent. Doucet is a native of New Brunswick, Canada, where she grew up in an Anglophone family. Working as a freelance journalist in West Africa between 1983 and 1988 provided the basis for her long-term career with the BBC. In 1994 she opened the BBC office in Amman, Jordan, and in 1999 she joined the BBC’s team of presenters but continues to report directly from the field.  Doucet is now often deployed to anchor significant news events directly from the field. She has played a leading role of the BBCs coverage of the Arab Spring, reporting from Tunisia, Egypt and Libya. Recently, Doucet reported extensively from Kabul Airport in 2021 and in 2022 the Russian Invasion of Ukraine, reporting from Kyiv.

Lyse Doucet

Doucet has made a name for herself by explaining complex situations from dangerous conflict zones. She joins a group of trailblazing female war correspondents. Whilst she does not have the reckless fervour of some of her colleagues, she is able to provide a dignity to those whose plight she is reporting on. Doucet is able to give a voice to these people whose names we do not know but whose suffering we better understand. 

Doucet is a multi-award winning journalist, who was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire for services to British Journalism in 2014. She has also won an Emmy award for her team’s coverage of the Syria conflict as well as being nominated or a BAFTA award in 2015 for her documentary Children of Syria.