Blog & Op-eds

Christmas is Canceled in the Land of Jesus’ Birth
December 21, 2023
Bethlehem usually comes alive at Christmas. Not this year. In the Holy Land, celebrations have been ...
Why Global Leadership on Refugees Matters
September 20, 2017
This weekend, I picked up Nelson Mandela's "Long Walk to Freedom" and reread parts of this well-thum...
Better Gender Data Is Key for Supporting Refugees
June 24, 2016
What’s worse than being a refugee, forced to flee your home, your community, and your country; leave...
Queen Rania: Millions of Refugee Children Around the World Deserve Better
May 30, 2016
Imagine you are six years old, four feet tall and too young to truly know what’s going on. Your chil...
Queen Rania: The Syrian Refugees I Met Are Experiencing Something Worse than Death
May 05, 2016
In his novel "Blindness,” José Saramago asks us to imagine a world where one by one, people lose the...
Discover Jordan’s past and present in Google Maps
November 23, 2015
Starting today you can explore more than 30 historical sites throughout Jordan in Google Street View...
What Good Is Technological Progress Without Moral Progress? Blog Post on the Huffington Post.
May 07, 2015
Energy-neutral, glow-in-the-dark trees planted on pavements to replace street lights. Water pipes th...
Extremism's Innocent Victims: Children and Islam
December 17, 2014
Yesterday morning, all over the world, mothers kissed their children and waved them off to school, l...
Gaza: The Makings of a Modern Day Dystopia
July 24, 2014
dys·to·pia [ \dis-ˈtō-pē-ə\] noun: an imaginary place where people are unhappy and usually afraid be...
Girls Who Dream Become Women with Vision
March 26, 2014
"I am a dreamer," it said. "It" was a drawing of a young girl by a 14-year-old student called Mar...
The Spirit of Sisterhood Relay - Huffington Post
March 21, 2013
Today is Mother's Day across the Arab world, so this baton goes out to every Arab mom, grandmother, ...
Education for Security and Development
May 11, 2011
When we think of war, we think of soldiers. But they’re not the only ones facing violence and death....
A Century of Giving Back
March 08, 2011
Her face has been kissed by Time. Every crease and line around her eyes records a moment in her life...
2+3=8
August 15, 2010
Now, before you reach for your red pens, or tut that the Queen of Jordan can’t do math, let me expla...
Queen Rania: Hardliners Are Now the Face of Israel
June 07, 2010
What do chocolate, cookies, A4 paper, potato chips, cumin, toys, jelly, nuts, dried fruit, nutmeg, a...
An Issue Where Canada Needs to Lead
March 23, 2010
Slippery hands. Tree bark. Tugboats. You won't find these in UNESCO's Global Monitoring Report being...
WEF: Think Business Unusual
January 31, 2010
The great thinkers and tinkerers of global politics and business descended on Davos, Switzerland, fo...
Haiti: Heroism and Humanity
January 17, 2010
Mothers’ faces wretched in agony as they stumble through debris crying out their children’s names. D...