Colombia's 2022 Presidential Race
Features for the New York Times, Sunday Times, Prospect Magazine, Pitchfork, Dazed, Delayed Gratification etc.
News for the Times, the Telegraph, Sky News, & various UK local news outlets.
Newsreader and host of the Colombia Calling podcast, plus occasional TV & radio.
Research and analysis on politics and human rights quoted by the Guardian, BBC, Times, CNN, Time Magazine, etc, and by the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression.
Fluent English & Spanish | NCTJ-accredited via Press Association
Colombia's 2022 Presidential Race
I covered the Colombian elections for The Times, Sunday Times, and Times Radio in 2022 - numerous publications in print and online - selected work here.
Features from Colombia
A peace deal should have consigned Colombia’s guerrilla conflict to history. But a new generation of armed groups has taken hold—and the country is stuck between the violence of old and new. Also in print - July 2022 issue.
Crisalida, a LGBTQ collective from San Rafael, Colombia, was brutalised under paramilitary occupation of the small Andean town. Their leader was brutally murdered and many went into hiding, but they are now emerging defiant, demanding justice for the war crimes committed against them.
Deep in the Colombian rainforest lies the world’s largest concentration of rock art. What does it reveal about the people who painted it 20,000 years ago?
A man perches on a rock, holding a small microphone over a roaring river, water tumbling over boulders, flanked by lush jungle and hanging vines. The Andes Mountains rise up on all sides, crumpled-paper ridges shrouded in gauzy clouds. He stretches his arm out - gripping tightly, listening intently.
"COVID is not killing us. Armed groups are killing us." FARC groups have begun murdering and taking hostages in retribution for violations of their coronavirus measures.
Canapés and dust masks in Colombia as the mayor throws a surreal party for the demolition of Pablo Escobar's former home. Also in print on 3 April 2019.
Multimedia Reporting from Latin America
From a tiny purple cabin, in a valley flanked by four volcanoes, a group of young journalists is pushing back against a tide of white noise, creating space for marginalised young people.
Eight people are now in custody, including the man thought to be the gang's leader.
Live Interview on the Colombian Elections
A weekly news briefing via WhatsApp/Telegram: a five-minute audio and a bullet-point whip-through of the week's top stories from Colombia - delivered every Monday.
Longform interview about Colombia's election of its first ever left wing government - and it's first even Female Afro-Colombian Vice-President - with Erlendy Cuero of Afrodes.
Podcast and Radio
I write and deliver the news segment for this weekly podcast, and regularly host, doing longform radio interviews with a huge range of guests - from writers and translators to scientists and researchers. The podcast has around 10,000 listeners per month.
As the UN demands action from the Colombian Government to curb violence in the country, I went on Times Radio to explain the roots and nature of crisis here.
Emily Hart sits with Booker Prize Chair Frank Wynne, tracing his incredible career from the start of his linguistic journey to his award-winning translation of writers across Latin America and the francophone world - particularly his work on cult Colombian author and 'Enemy Number 1 of Macondo' - Andrés Caicedo.
Colombian Media
Exclusive feature for Latin America Reports, where I was Contributing Editor
Hundreds gathered at a Medellin art festival on Monday to demonstrate against the spiralling violence and impunity that plague Colombia's second largest city. Central to the opening night was one of the latest victims of violence, graphic artist Mauricio Ospina.
If you glance up at the hills above the centre, into the outskirts of the city, there are different stories to be told, complex stories which don’t fit the neat narrative of the “post-narco” city which authorities are ever-keen to tell.
The Pope shared a joint with a Bolivian President. Vaccinations increase your chance of developing AIDS. A 1960s sci-fi movie predicted the arrival of the Omicron variant.
Research and Analysis - Politics and Human Rights
Internet blackouts. Strategic lawsuits against journalists. Regulations restricting the activities of NGOs. The weaponisation of health and security policies. These are all strategies that governments around the world are increasingly using to curtail the right to dissent, protest, and even just access information.
I have been researcher and author of this report for five years - data-based research which tracks freedom of expression across the world.
Op-Ed ghostwritten for ARTICLE 19's CEO Quinn McKew
Human rights experts from Brazil, Tunisia and Thailand speak to Emily Hart about how freedom of expression has fared since the outbreak of Covid-19.
Austria's biggest magazine on Urbanism covered my research on the urban dynamics of Medellín.
In my first year as author of the Global Expression Report, the Guardian ran my research with a double page spread and a front page nib.
Op-Ed ghostwritten for ARTICLE 19's CEO Quinn McKew.
Culture and Review
Ella Hickson's 'The Writer' is a blistering two hours of unanswered questions. It is relentless and hopeless, but ultimately, to use its own words, 'defibrillating'. The Writer of the title walks the stage in numerous guises, from Lara Rossi's furious 24 year old to Romola Garai's Writer, with various personas from mythical narrator to exasperated playwright.
On Friday night, in the midst of a storm, Patti Smith recited her poem Hecatombe - an homage to author Roberto Bolaño; she then alternated between spoken word and musical work, speaking of hope in the face of the challenges ahead, and urging us to find ways to be together - and to love.
The rights of women on their periods in police custody are being violated in England and Wales, according to police custody watchdog the Independent Custody Visitation Association (ICVA). "I know what it's like as a woman, to feel dirty, and like you don't have control, bleeding...
Local News - Reporting from the UK
Poet William Blake, perhaps the most famous member of the Druid Order, wrote, "I have conversed with the spiritual sun. I saw him on Primrose Hill." Photos mine.
In 2018, TOYS 'R' US will be closing 26 of its UK stores, with 800 jobs at risk, as toy shops disappear and high street outlets struggle across the country.
120 German spies operated in Britain from 1914 to 1918. Print and E-Edition of Ham&High, p18 http://edition.pagesuite-professional.co.uk/html5/reader/production/default.aspx?pubname=&edid=f8c3d395-a3cb-47a2-9ee9-aa43dfe48053
Travel and Lifestyle
Human Rights Research & NGO Reports
A woman in rural Mexico recently told my colleague, "We've always been told we don't have a voice, but that's not true. Since we began looking for information, my life changed, and the lives of other people in the community as well." Today, 28 September, is International Right to Know Day.
Protest is increasingly going digital. Whether it is using the internet to organise and report physical acts of protest, using online space as a platform on which to take action, or targeting online infrastructure itself: across the world, people are taking their right to protest online.
This week, cartoonist and political satirist Zunar spoke to ARTICLE 19's Emily Hart about politics, satire, and his upcoming trial.
Writing Rights Ltd - Editing and Consultancy
An investigation into use of social platforms and dating apps by the LGBTQ community in Egypt, Lebanon, and Iran.