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Queen Noor says women are key to peace-building in Mideast
San Antonio, Nov 07: Queen Noor of Jordan believes women are key to peace-building efforts in the Middle East.
San Antonio, Nov 07: Queen Noor of Jordan believes
women are key to peace-building efforts in the Middle East.
"Women are left to pick up the shattered pieces of
society when a conflict is over," she told a crowd of about
2,000 people at Trinity University Wednesday. "If peace is
truly to take place in the middle east, women must play a
role."
Noor was in San Antonio as part of the university's 2003-04 distinguished lecture series.
She said many women in the Middle East feel hopeless because of hard-line traditions that stifle attitudes supported by a peace-loving mainstream majority, the San Antonio Express-News reported yesterday. Such traditions, she said, tend to deny women a voice in their national future.
"Studies have shown that the positions of women are the best indicators of a country's development," she said. "Women help cross ethnic, religious and cultural divides towards peace."
The Queen was born Lisa Najeeb Halaby in New York in 1951 to a wealthy Pan American World Airways executive of Arabic descent. She is an Islamic convert and the widow of King Hussein of Jordan, having met the king when he visited her father in Jordan in 1976.
She has staunchly supported children's and women's rights, human rights and the environment in Jordan. Her 2003 memoir, "leap of faith," covers her American childhood, her courtship and the King's efforts at brokering peace in the Middle East.
Bureau Report
Noor was in San Antonio as part of the university's 2003-04 distinguished lecture series.
She said many women in the Middle East feel hopeless because of hard-line traditions that stifle attitudes supported by a peace-loving mainstream majority, the San Antonio Express-News reported yesterday. Such traditions, she said, tend to deny women a voice in their national future.
"Studies have shown that the positions of women are the best indicators of a country's development," she said. "Women help cross ethnic, religious and cultural divides towards peace."
The Queen was born Lisa Najeeb Halaby in New York in 1951 to a wealthy Pan American World Airways executive of Arabic descent. She is an Islamic convert and the widow of King Hussein of Jordan, having met the king when he visited her father in Jordan in 1976.
She has staunchly supported children's and women's rights, human rights and the environment in Jordan. Her 2003 memoir, "leap of faith," covers her American childhood, her courtship and the King's efforts at brokering peace in the Middle East.
Bureau Report