Kate Holt

Biography

Holt was born in Zimbabwe in 1972 to British and South African parents. She grew up in Newfoundland and was educated in the UK at St Anne's, Windermere, from the age of eleven. Before going to university, she spent a year working in the Negru Voda Orphanage in Romania with HIV positive and disabled children. She returned there each summer during her years as a student. She completed her studies with a History Masters from St Andrew's University, Scotland and a Post Graduate Diploma in Photojournalism from The London School of Printing, London.

For 10 years, Holt was based in Nairobi, Kenya covering news events throughout East and West Africa. In 2009, she relocated to Kabul, Afghanistan and spent three years covering the ongoing conflict there for a variety of British newspapers including the Daily Mail, The Guardian and the Financial Times. Holt is now based in the UK while travelling throughout Africa and the Middle East to gather humanitarian and development stories for UK and global media and for her media and communications agency Arete.

Career

She began her career with the BBC, working on Breakfast News and BBC News 24. Her first field experiences were in Kosovo, documenting the effects of the conflict on the civilian population. From there she went on to write her first investigative report which uncovered the trafficking of young girls from Eastern Europe into Bosnia and on to the UK This work was published as a cover feature in The Sunday Times Magazine'' and in The Observer. It was the first time the issue of trafficking of women from Eastern Europe for sexual purposes was exposed. At the time the Home Office denied any such trade existed.

In 2001, after the September 11 attacks in the US, Holt travelled to Pakistan and documented the influx of refugees over the border form Afghanistan as US and British troops closed in on the Taliban. Afghanistan is a country she has returned to work in regularly.

In 2003, Holt traveled into Iraq with the first medical convoy to offer support to both Basra and Nazariyah as the coalition troops toppled Saddam Hussein.

Since then, Holt has travelled to document the experiences of refugees and the effects of war and poverty on women and children in conflicts in Democratic Republic of the Congo, Liberia, Somalia, South Sudan, Kenya, Sudan, Zimbabwe, Iraq, Afghanistan and Haiti. She photographs for non-governmental organizations (NGOs) including UNICEF, Care International, Jhpiego, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Médecins Sans Frontières and United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

Holt is a regular contributor to The BBC, The Guardian and The Mail on Sunday. Her work has also been published in The Independent, The Times, The Observer, Daily Mail, The Daily Telegraph and Financial Times.

In February 2012, Holt launched Arete, a media and communications agency specializing in humanitarian storytelling, media strategy and training, and which produces content for NGOs, charities and corporations in order to tell "stories that make a difference".

In 2013, Holt was the first journalist to expose rape as a weapon of war being used by Somali soldiers against women living in refugee camps throughout Mogadishu. The story was published by The Guardian and subsequently numerous human rights groups have become engaged in the issue.

In 2014, Holt was the first journalist to expose the sexual abuse of women in South Sudan following the return to war between South Sudanese Government soldiers and opposition forces.

Sexual exploitation by UN Peacekeepers and the resignation of the High Commissioner

In 2004 and 2005, Holt uncovered a story of sexual exploitation by United Nations Peacekeepers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in a series of articles for The Independent. The story led to Kofi Annan announcing a 'Zero Tolerance' policy on the issue.

Holt went on to publish an article concerning an apparent cover-up by the UN in New York, of sexual harassment by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the former Prime Minister of the Netherlands, Ruud Lubbers. Her article concerned an OIOS report that stated Lubbers had sexually harassed members of his staff. The report, which had later been reviewed following challenges to its verdict, was found to be deficient in reasoning as there was no corroboratory evidence from the other witnesses to the alleged harassment. For this reason, the UN decided not to publish the report. Ruud Lubbers subsequently resigned from his post after Holts article was published due to the negative publicity, although he maintained that he was innocent of any allegations. Kofi Annan, whilst accepting his resignation, also stated that he did so even though the findings that the allegations had no substance were still valid.

Awards

In 1996, while at St Andrews, the University awarded Holt a prize for exceptional services to a community for her work in Romanian orphanages.

Holt has been nominated twice for the Amnesty Award for Humanitarian Reporting. Once in 2005 for her series of articles entitled when peacemakers become predators and again in 2010 for a photographic series on Elderly people in Zimbabwe.

She was highly commended by Amnesty International for her coverage of the drought crisis in the Horn of Africa in 2011.

Exhibitions

In 2003, Holt traveled to Iraq and photographed the impact of the UK and US invasion on the civilian population in Basra and Nazariah. The work produced was exhibited in London and Angers in France. The exhibition, entitled 'Victory' was supported by the playwright Harold Pinter and Tariq Ali, both of whom supported the anti-war movement. The photographs were used by Amnesty International for their campaign to end the use of cluster bombs and illegal weapons by the Coalition Forces in Iraq.

Between 2010 and 2011, Holt was embedded with AMISOM troops from Uganda and Burundi on the frontline of Mogadishu. As well as producing a body of work on behalf of AMISOM she trained six Ugandan and Burundian soldiers in photography. The results of this training and her own work were exhibited in the Nairobi National Museum, Kenya in October 2011 in an exhibition entitled Brothers in Arms. The exhibition subsequently traveled to the National Museum in Uganda and the UN Exhibition Centre in Burundi and now resides on the AMISOM base in Mogadishu International Airport.