Elizabeth Hagedorn is a freelance journalist focusing on migration and conflict with bylines in The Guardian, Middle East Eye and Public Radio International.
Three years after his disappearance, the family of American citizen Majd Kamalmaz, held in Syria, are calling on former detainees to share what they know.
With an estimated 150,000 people displaced in the past two weeks, aid agencies are warning of a potential humanitarian catastrophe unlike anything seen in the past nine years of war.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and US Vice President Mike Pence announced a five-day pause in fighting but the deal is met with suspicion among displaced residents.
Following months of airstrikes and shelling on rebel-held parts of northwest Syria, medical workers have been forced to operate underground at undisclosed locations.
Thousands of Yazidis were enslaved, raped and slaughtered when IS stormed their ancestral homeland of Sinjar in August 2014, but no one has yet been held accountable for the crimes.