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Profile: Moushira Khattab, Egypt's first female nominee for UNESCO chief

Xinhua, July 21, 2016 Adjust font size:

Egypt has recently nominated Moushira Khattab, former Minister of Family and Population, for the post of director-general of the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), seeking to replace current Bulgarian chief Irina Bokova who announced candidacy for the UN secretary-general position.

Khattab has a longstanding record of social, diplomatic and ministerial work as an active, leading woman and a world-renowned expert in the areas development and human rights.

Khattab served as Egypt's Minister of Family and Population from 2009 to 2011 under ousted long-time president Hosni Mubarak.

In 1999, Khattab served as Assistant Foreign Minister for Cultural Relations. Meanwhile, she became chief of Egypt's National Council for Childhood and Motherhood (NCCM), the country's highest entity in this field, from 1999 to 2010.

From 1994 to 1999, the diplomat served as Egypt's first ambassador to Nelson Mandela's South Africa, after she was the country's ambassador to the Czech and Slovak Republics from 1992 to 1994.

As for Khattab's education, she was graduated in Cairo University and got her bachelor degree in political science in 1967; a year later she started her diplomatic career at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. She later got her master's degree in the same field from University of North Carolina, the United States, and got her PH.D in International Human Rights Law from Cairo University.

Focusing in the field of development and human rights over the past 15 years, Khattab as NCCM chief raised sensitive social issues in Egypt such as females' education, females' circumcision, birth control, secret marriage and others.

She also launched a national campaign against underage marriage and managed to amend a relevant civil status law raising the minimum age for a female to get married to 18.

Khattab established the first unit at the NCCM to combat children trafficking and carried out several programs to rehabilitate working and street children and reengage them in education.

She also worked on the Egyptian child code to get an amended law committing the government a good quality education for all without any discrimination and making denial of education a crime.

Khattab is the first woman to be nominated by Egypt for such an international high-profile post. Egypt nominated former Culture Minister Farouk Hosni for the same post in 2009 but he lost then to Bokova.

The chances for Khattab to get the top UNESCO job are greater than the former Egyptian nominee as "there is understanding inside the UNESCO to have the next director-general from the Arab group to achieve just geographic distribution," according to Egyptian Prime Minister Sherif Ismail.

Khattab has a fellow Arab contestant for the UNESCO leadership as Qatar has nominated official cultural adviser Hamad bin Hamad bin Abdulaziz al-Kuwari for the post whose elections are scheduled for October 2017. Endit