Yalda Hakim

Award-winning foreign correspondent Yalda Hakim anchors the flagship BBC programme Impact with Yalda Hakim. She delivers hard-hitting journalism in the field, for the Our World strand and across BBC News in both television and radio, and is an anchor presenter of the BBC News, which recently combined and replaced the former BBC World News and BBC News channels.

In August 2021, Hakim led BBC World News coverage of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, the collapse of the Afghan government, and the Taliban’s return to power. Just days after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, she began reporting from the Ukrainian city of Lviv. She has reported from some of the world’s most dangerous places, including Iraq, South Sudan, and Eritrea.

Hakim has secured a number of high-profile interviews for the BBC. She was the first international journalist to interview US Secretary of State Antony Blinken; and her interview with President Trump’s National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster made global headlines when he accepted that Russia had interfered in the 2016 US elections.