By Salwa Jandoubi, NNN-KUNA
United Nations : A group of Arab women goodwill ambassadors for the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) has been officially established, it was announced here.
The group founder, Rajaa Al-Mukaddam, a Lebanese-American activist and former diplomat, told KUNA in a phone conversation Tuesday that the open-ended group includes Kawther Aljouan, Kuwaiti lawyer and president of women NGOs in Kuwait, Feryal Al-Frieh, Kuwaiti women activist and Adla Al-Sayer, also a women activist, educator and founder of American schools in Kuwait.
The group also includes a number of Lebanese-American activists and will soon be joined by a number of selected intellectuals, academicians, businesswomen and managers from Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt and other Arab countries.
Sheikha Haya Rashid Al-Khalifa of Bahrain, the General Assembly’s current president, is also expected to join the group. Sheikha Mouza of Qatar is also expected to become the honorary chairperson.
The group’s activities coincide with the opening of the UN General Assembly’s 62nd session which is scheduled for next week.
Al-Mukaddam said the group will gather here on Nov 29 in a Conference on Arab Women Leadership Role, to call for an end of discrimination against women in the Arab World.
“The group will focus on the illiteracy problem for the Arab women in the Arab world, where for every two women, one is illiterate,” she said.
World leaders agreed during the 2000 Summit to achieve eight Millennium Development Goals which range from halving extreme poverty to halting the spread of HIV/AIDS and providing universal primary education, all by the target date of 2015.
Al-Mukaddam also announced the establishment of the Arab Women Fund for the UN, following the UN experts’ group meeting in Oslo last week on the theme: ‘Financing for gender equality and the empowerment of women.’ The fund is to support UN projects in this field as well as in the fields of human rights, development, peace and security.
The fund is supposed to deliver to the UN a cheque for USD 22 million to support UN projects and implement some MDG projects in the Arab World.
She said the formation of the group of goodwill ambassadors and the fund were both approved by former Secretary-General Kofi Annan who encouraged her to press ahead with the projects.
Last May, she added, she wrote a letter to current Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon informing him of the start of the operations in research and funds for the two UN projects.