Bel Trew is the multi-award-winning Chief International Correspondent for The Independent, as well as a documentary filmmaker and photographer. She has spent the past decade and a half covering some of the world’s most significant conflicts and crises, with a focus on gathering evidence of war crimes and exposing the devastating impact on civilian populations. 

Born and raised in the Gulf and Eastern Europe, Bel began her international reporting career at start of the Arab Spring in 2011, reporting on uprisings and wars from Sudan to Yemen, from Gaza to Syria. She has since broadened her scope to cover global news events, wars and humanitarian crises in Ukraine, the United States and multiple Sub-Saharan African countries.  

Bel has been named Foreign Reporter of the Year at the UK Press Awards, has won the Marie Colvin Award for her body of work, and has been a finalist for many other prizes — most recently the 2025 Amnesty Media Awards, for her investigative series exposing new evidence of likely war crimes committed against Ukrainians with disabilities.