Her Majesty Queen Noor Al-Hussein
Her Majesty Queen Noor Al-Hussein
Queen Dowager of Jordan
Her Majesty Queen Noor, Jordan
Her Majesty Queen Noor is an international public servant and advocate for cross-cultural understanding, conflict prevention and recovery issues such as those related to refugees, missing persons, poverty, climate change and disarmament. Her peace-building work has focused on the Middle East, the Balkans, Central and Southeast Asia, Latin America and Africa.
(Born to an Arab-American family distinguished for its public service, she received a degree in Architecture and Urban Planning from Princeton University prior to working on international urban planning and design projects in Australia, Iran, the United States and the Arab world. She married His Majesty King Hussein bin Talal of Jordan in 1978 and was widowed when the King passed away in 1999 after a brief bout with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.)
Queen Noor’s work in Jordan and the Arab world has focused on national and regional human security in the areas of education, conservation, sustainable development, human rights and cross-cultural understanding. Since 1979, the initiatives of the Noor Al Hussein Foundation and the King Hussein Foundation, which she founded and chairs, have transformed development thinking in Jordan and the Middle East through pioneering best practice programs in the fields of poverty eradication and women’s empowerment, microfinance, health, and the arts as a medium for social development and cross-cultural exchange. The Foundations provide training and capacity building expertise in these areas in the broader Arab and Asian regions.
A long-time advocate for a just Arab-Israeli peace and for Palestinian refugees, Queen Noor has been an outspoken voice for the protection of civilians in conflict and displaced persons around the world. Her focus has included advocacy for Palestinian refugees, Afghans displaced after the 2001 war, displaced Pakistanis, Iraqis displaced in Iraq, Jordan, Syria and other countries after the 2003 Iraq conflict and for the millions of
Syrians displaced since the onset of the Syrian civil war in 2011. She has also been an expert advisor to the United Nations focusing on implementation of the MDGs in Central Asia and on behalf of Colombia’s displaced.
She has focused on environmental conservation and human security with emphasis on water and Ocean health and protection issues. She is Patron of the International Union for Conservation of Nature, Founding and Emeritus President of BirdLife International, Trustee Emeritus of Conservation International, a member of the Ocean Elders and WEF’s Friends of Ocean Action and Patron of the Scotia Group and has received a variety of awards and honors for her activism.
Queen Noor has also focused extensively on the Balkans since her first humanitarian mission in 1996 to the survivors of the tragic fall of Srebrenica. Over the following years, Queen Noor worked closely with families of the missing from Srebrenica and the Western Balkans region as a Commissioner of the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP), created in 1996 to promote reconciliation and conflict resolution after the Balkans war. ICMP today is the leading provider of DNA-assisted identifications, and related healing, justice and reconciliation best practices to countries worldwide dealing with natural catastrophes, human rights abuses and conflict.
(As ICMP’s longest serving Commissioner, Queen Noor has supported the organization’s development into an intergovernmental organization with headquarters in The Hague and its work with more than 40 countries and active engagement in programs in Iraq and among the Syrian Diaspora, Colombia, Mexico, as well as in the Western Balkans. )
Queen Noor has been an advisor to, and global advocate for, the International Campaign to Ban Landmines and was a founding leader of Global Zero, an international movement working for the worldwide elimination of nuclear weapons. She represented Global Zero at the historic 2009 UN Security Council meeting and was an advisor to the 2010 documentary film, Countdown to Zero about the escalating global nuclear arms threat.
Queen Noor is also involved with a number of other international organizations advancing global peace-building and conflict recovery. Since 1995 she has been President of the United World Colleges (UWC), a network of 18 equal-opportunity international IB colleges around the world which foster cross-cultural understanding and global peacebuilding; a Trustee of the Aspen Institute, and Advisor to Search for Common Ground.
She has also worked with a number of international organizations advancing global peace-building and conflict recovery such as the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, Seeds of Peace, Council of Women World Leaders, and Women Waging Peace and as a member of the Pew Global Attitudes Survey International Advisory Board and Trust Women – the Thomson Reuters Foundation annual conference aiming to put the rule of law behind women’s rights.
In recognition of her efforts to advance development, democracy and peace, the Queen has been awarded numerous awards and honorary doctorates in international relations, law and humane letters.