Oxfam Mourns Death of Boston Globe Journalist Elizabeth Neuffer
9 May 2003
For more information, contact:
Adrienne Leicester Smith
617-728-2406 (office)
asmith@oxfamamerica.org
BOSTON, MA (May 9, 2003) - Oxfam expresses its condolences to the family and colleagues of Boston Globe Correspondent Elizabeth Neuffer, 46. She was killed today with her translator in an automobile accident near the town of Samara, Iraq. Elizabeth was a tireless advocate with her writing for those denied of their basic human rights, both at home and abroad.
"Elizabeth was both respected and loved by the humanitarian community for her commitment and courage," Oxfam President Raymond C. Offenheiser said today. "Her passing is a great loss for those who struggled to bring attention to people and problems that rarely made the front page."
Beyond her award-winning work on war crimes in Bosnia and Rwanda, she wrote often and eloquently about people living amidst poverty and conflict in slums and war zones from Afghanistan to Guatemala. In one piece on the global coffee crisis, Elizabeth delved intimately into the lives of impoverished coffee growers in Latin America who, because of the lowest going price for coffee in nearly seventy years, were selling their coffee at a loss. That story opened a door for the American public into the lives of families eking out a living in the coffee fields.
Her inventive eye for detail and nuance humanized her subjects and became a hallmark of how she told her stories, which were always stories that needed to be told. Oxfam sends its sympathies to Elizabeth's family, especially her partner Peter Canellos.
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