Lyse Doucet

Early Life and Education

Lyse Doucet was born in Bathurst, New Brunswick, on Christmas Eve 1958, to a large Catholic family. Her father, Clarence Doucet, was a supervisor at a local paper mill. Her mother Norma was a nurturing and supportive influence, and Doucet recalled enjoying listening to her tell stories of her and her family’s life. She credits her mother with instilling in her a life-long love of learning.

Doucet is one of six children, three boys and three girls. Her sister, Andrea Doucet, is a noted Canadian sociologist. Doucet credits the strength of her connection to her family and community as what has allowed her to spend so much of her life outside of Canada, travelling the world as a journalist. She has Acadian and Irish ancestry. She learned French in part to reconnect with her Acadian roots. Doucet is multilingual, speaking French, English and Farsi.

Doucet obtained her BA Honours from Queen’s University. She also has a master’s in International Relations from the University of Toronto.

Career Highlights

Lyse Doucet has said that it was a chance conversation with a group of Ivorian women during a 1982 deployment with the charitable organization Crossroads International that changed her life and set her on the course of becoming a globe-trotting journalist. She had been pounding yams with the group for several days before she asked them if they would like to do something different. They were incredulous, responding that there was nothing else they could do. Doucet took from this experience several valuable lessons she would use throughout the rest of her career. The experience left her committed to understanding societies on their own terms. She has since become an honorary patron of Crossroads International.

Doucet began her work as a freelance journalist based in West Africa shortly after her deployment with Crossroads. At the beginning of her career, from 1983 to 1988, Doucet was based in Côte d’Ivoire and reported from across Africa for the BBC as well as Canadian news media. She then took on a variety of international postings for the BBC. These included Jerusalem, Tehran, Amman, Islamabad, Abidjan and Kabul. She worked as a foreign correspondent for the BBC for 15 years before becoming a BBC presenter in 1999.

Doucet was based in Afghanistan in 1988–89 to cover the withdrawal of Soviet forces from that country. She was then dispatched to Pakistan and reported from Islamabad from 1989 to 1993. In 1994, she established the BBC’s office in Amman, Jordan.

Doucet’s instincts as a journalist and her commitment to her trade are somewhat legendary. She was attending a wedding as an invited guest of former Afghan President Hamid Karzai when the latter survived an assassination attempt. Doucet reported on the incident based on her eye-witness account.

Despite having covered many wars throughout her career as a journalist and having reported from many war zones, Doucet refuses to be referred to as a war correspondent. She argues that everyone she has ever met in a war zone wanted to escape from it and that no one wants to live in a war zone.

Doucet has reported live from some of the most pivotal events of the latter 20th and early 21st centuries. Most notably, she led the BBC’s coverage of the Arab Spring in 2011. Doucet has covered nearly all major conflicts in the Middle East since 1990. Doucet also covered the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami from both India and Indonesia. She is a frequent visitor to Afghanistan and Pakistan, countries she has been reporting on since the late 1980s.

Other Activities

In addition to her work as a journalist, Lyse Doucet is also a member of the International Council on Human Rights Policy. Highly active in philanthropic pursuits, she is also a member of Friends of Aschiana UK, a British charity that supports working street children in Afghanistan. Doucet is also a senior fellow of the University of Toronto’s Massey College, and a founding member of the Marie Colvin Journalists’ Network. She is also trustee of the Frontline Club for journalists and the mediation firm Inter-Mediate.

Honours and Awards

Lyse Doucet’s reporting from Afghanistan earned her both a Peabody Award and a David Bloom Award in 2010. In 2011, she was nominated for two Emmy Awards. Her radio reports from Tunisia in 2012 earned her an Edward R. Murrow Award.

In recognition of her services to broadcasting, Doucet was awarded an Order of the British Empire in the Queen’s Honours list in 2014. That same year, Doucet’s reporting from Syria earned her and her team an Emmy and a Peabody Award. She also received the 2014 Prix Bayeux Calvados for her reporting from inside a Palestinian camp outside Damascus.

Doucet received a Columbia Journalism Award for lifetime achievement in 2016. Also that year, she won the Sandford St Martin Trustee Award for her reporting on religious affairs and issues. In 2017, the British Journalism Review honoured Doucet with the Charles Wheeler Award for Broadcasting. She also won Italy’s Luchetta Award that same year for her reporting on Syrian children, as well as the Next Century Foundation Award for Outstanding Contribution to Broadcasting.

In 2018, Doucet received the Trailblazer Award from the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security. That same year, she won the Change the Culture Award from the education charity Theirworld.

Doucet was made a Member of the Order of Canada in 2018. She was recognized for her empathetic coverage of major international historical events, as well as for her integrity and gravitas, her leadership qualities and for encouraging new generations of Canadian journalists.

Honorary Degrees

• Doctor of Letters, University of New Brunswick (2006)
• Doctor of Laws, University of Toronto (2009)
• Doctorate in Journalism, Université de Moncton (2010)
• Honorary Doctorate, University of York (2012)
• Doctor of Laws, University of St Andrew (2014)
• Honorary Doctorate, Queen’s University (2015)
• Doctor of Humane Letters, Liverpool Hope University (2015)
• Doctor of Letters, York St John University (2016)
• Doctor of Arts, University of Bedfordshire (2017)
• Honorary Degree, University of Sussex (2018)
• Honorary Doctorate, Queen’s University Belfast (2019)
• Doctor of Letters, University of Exeter (2022)
• Doctor of Laws, Mount Allison University (2023)
• Honorary Doctorate, University of Oxford (2023)
• Doctor of Laws, Concordia University (2024)
• Doctor of Letters, Keele University (2024)