Queen NoorThe widow of
Jordan’s King Hussein
carries on her
work for peace,
justice, and
other noble causes
Queen Noor is the widow of King Hussein of Jordan, who died in 1999. She was born Lisa Najeeb Halaby in Washington, D.C. Her father, Najeeb Halaby, served as head of the Federal Aviation Administration under
John F. Kennedy and was the CEO of
Pan American World Airways from
1969 to 1972.
She attended private schools and was a member of the first coeducational class at Princeton University, graduating in 1974 with a degree in architecture and urban planning. After working in Australia, she joined a British architectural firm commissioned to redesign Tehran, Iran. She moved back to the United States and considered a career in journalism and television production. About the same time, her father had been hired by the Jordanian government to relaunch its national airline, and she accepted his offer to become director of facilities planning and design. By 1977, she’d had several casual encounters with the king, whose wife, Alia, had died in a helicopter crash earlier that year. Halaby and the king began seeing each other – initially as tentative friends, but their friendship quickly evolved into a romance. They were married in 1978.
Throughout her marriage and continuing after her husband’s death from cancer, Queen Noor has devoted her energies to a wide spectrum of humanitarian efforts. In Jordan and throughout the Arab world, she has focused on education, sustainable economic development, and human rights initiatives. She chairs the Noor Al Hussein Foundation, whose pioneering programs for poverty eradication, women’s empowerment, microfinance, health, and environmental conservation have become paradigms
for the developing world. She also chairs the King Hussein Foundation and the King Hussein Foundation International, which promote education and leadership to enhance understanding and respect across conflict lines. She is an internationally recognized leader in the advocacy of worldwide land mine bans, the rights of refugees and displaced people, and conflict resolution through the recovery of missing persons. She is also a founding leader of Global Zero, which seeks to eliminate nuclear weapons; president of United World Colleges; and a board member of the Aspen Institute and Refugees International, to name a few.
Editor in Chief John Rezek talked with Queen Noor in June. He reports:
Queen Noor returned to her suite at the Westin Hotel from the Centre Bell in Montréal, Québec, Canada, where she had just addressed a plenary session at the RI Convention to a rousing reception.
I was ushered into the room where her assistant was coiling cords and packing up computer equipment. Her Majesty entered, immediately offering her hand, as I introduced myself. She is tall, well postured, full maned, and unmistakably regal. She might disagree with everything except the tall part.
We settled into our conversation. She spoke with passion, irony, restraint, and openness. She was quick to smile and laugh – and quick, too, to return to seriousness. It was when she was discussing the Wye River conference, in which her husband interrupted his treatment at the Mayo Clinic to offer his counsel to U.S. President Bill Clinton, that she spoke more slowly and her brilliant blue eyes took on an additional glisten.
We talked for longer than we had planned, Her Majesty allowing that “I haven’t done an interview like this in a long time – like having a discussion with a friend.”
Well into the conversation, she asked if I’d like some water and got up, brought over two wine glasses from an adjacent table, and poured. She chastised herself for allowing some drops to hit the glass base and substituted her glass for the one she poured for me. “I’m rusty from my waitress days.”
The Rotarian: You have an enormous range of advocacy involvement, and I know that you have a strong belief in
the efficacy of partnerships. What are
the specific successes and challenges inherent in having such a general portfolio of issues?
Queen Noor: There are enormous challenges in addressing a range of issues, especially the kinds that I’m involved with, because I live in one of the most challenged and challenging regions of the world. First, it takes a lot of time
and energy to study, learn, listen, and then find the right people to collaborate with. I’m a collaborative type of leader.
I like teamwork. You get your best ideas and results by integrating different perspectives. That’s how my work in Jordan and the Noor Al Hussein Foundation became so diverse. I had worked in Jordan for a few years before my marriage, worked in Iran, and traveled throughout the Arab world, so I had some understanding of the region, but I still was very humble about how much I had yet to learn. I began to try to identify gaps in both private- and public-sector initiatives so that I wouldn’t be replicating what
was already underway. I wanted to fill gaps. Most areas had traditionally been approached with a siloed mentality, and I wondered, if we integrated issues, whether we might be able to devise more efficient and economical programs to address these challenges. So I began with a broad range of goals.
The Noor Al Hussein Foundation was established to make more efficient use of manpower and limited resources. It’s terribly important to work, as Rotary does, in a coalition-building, collaborative way that recognizes that when you’re addressing fundamental development issues, especially in the poorer parts of the world, you cannot look at women’s issues in isolation from children’s issues, poverty issues, even environmental, health, and education issues. In Jordan, we pioneered programs that focused on women’s health and
welfare, education of their families, and
that enabled these women to contribute to the economic life of their families.
The women would no longer be viewed as charity recipients, but as self-reliant. Today our microfinance company has been ranked No. 1 in the Middle East
and North Africa, not because it’s huge, but because we have integrated health, education, and family needs into the
programs that have helped women entrepreneurs with microlending support. This has enabled the entire process to become much more sustainable.
TR: Are women particularly good agents of stability?
Queen Noor: They’re the essential agents, really, along with security. If you don’t have fundamental security, it’s impossible for almost anything to take off. Women in many parts of the world are special targets, even if you have a relative degree of stability. If women aren’t safe from abuse from soldiers, from peacekeepers, from other members of their communities and families, it’s very hard for them to play the role that those communities need. Women hold the key. It’s not only that they’re the key to development: You educate a woman, and you educate an entire family. I have seen women who become economically productive through increasing their knowledge and understanding. Even if their education was minimal to begin with, they’ve had an impact on the men and the larger community. Also, we’ve seen women in many parts of the world play critical peacemaking and peace-building roles, from Ireland to Rwanda, in the Middle East and Latin America. There are many examples of women who’ve been able to bring to a conflict a perspective that is longer term and more family and community oriented than that of male politicians, who have traditionally dominated the process.
TR: Your humanitarian efforts are sparked by your curiosity and empathy. Are you personally more interested in one issue at a time? Are they like children – you love them all, but some demand special attention at special times?
Queen Noor: For me it’s a big-picture passion and commitment, born out of living in a region that has endured so much conflict and human suffering. I try to build stable, hopeful communities through all the different components of my work. That is the overriding passion. It doesn’t exclude anything – it includes all of it because it all is interconnected.
TR: Are there any truly lost causes?
Queen Noor: There are many people who will say that peace between Israelis and Palestinians, peace between Israelis and Arabs, or between Jews and Muslims and Christians, is impossible. But people who assume that don’t understand the people of our region. I have worked with Israelis, Palestinians, and Jordanians, and a multitude of people from other Arab countries. I’ve also seen some of the worst carnage in the former Yugoslavia. I’ve seen the depths of man’s inhumanity toward man, but I’ve also seen women and men sitting around a table, across from those who may have been responsible for the brutality of their own losses, trying to come to some sort of understanding about their common future. In the Middle East, I’m absolutely convinced, from firsthand knowledge, that the majority of Israelis and Palestinians have everything they need to achieve peace. The politicians stand in the way, but the people are the ones who have to sustain any kind of peace, and they fundamentally understand, accept, and are willing to support what would enable all these communities to live in peace. So I disagree with those who think that it’s written in the DNA of the people of the Middle East that they can never live in peace. On the contrary, there’s far more in the DNA that binds them, in terms of what they’re willing to give to live in peace with their neighbors, than divides them. The sense of hopelessness and lost cause comes from the propaganda of politicians.
TR: If you were to give a short course in how to deal with political unhelpfulness, what would it cover?
Queen Noor: Political irrationality. My husband is who you should be sitting with right now for that answer. He led Jordan for 47 years, and he led from his heart as well as his head. He really loved his country, and he understood that no Jordanians would live in peace and security unless their neighbors were living in peace and security. Just before his death, when he was in the United States fighting cancer at the Mayo Clinic, President Clinton called him and spoke to him about the stalemate between the Israelis and Palestinians at the Wye River conference in 1998. My husband ended up going, and it was an excruciating process. He was exhausted by the chemo, and the talks were dragging on. On the last evening, everybody was threatening to leave – as political posturing and because of a genuine lack of confidence in one another. Basically, he addressed them as though he were addressing squabbling children. He said there’s been enough quarreling, enough fighting, enough suffering. Think about your children and their children and about the legacy you’re leaving. Your actions have an impact on whether there will be a future of hope and opportunity for all your children. He pointed out some basic truths, and even if people disagreed with him, they had to respect him for his integrity and for his principles. He broke the stalemate, and there was an agreement signed at the White House.
TR: Your humanitarian work involves both impatience and patience. We don’t have to learn impatience. What are the keys to learning constructive patience?
Queen Noor: Well, you learn it quickly when you realize nothing happens overnight in humanitarian work. I’m talking from my own experience in Jordan, where I introduced some different ways of looking at the role of women. No one may have ever indicated to these women what they were able to do, or perhaps they never had the confidence or encouragement to look within themselves, at their own capabilities.
Humility is very important, because when you go into a humanitarian situation – and Rotary must know this very well – you’re going to take away as much or more from the people to whom you may be bringing ideas and resources. Some challenges are helping people remember how their ancestors might have preserved and protected a balance in the natural environment around them, which for many communities is the only sustainable future. If they overhunt, if they cut down too many trees, there won’t be a future for their children. When the modern notion of instant profit overwhelms traditional communities where the innate wisdom of the past has been lost, we try to help people rediscover that. The most profound change has taken place when women have become entrepreneurs. With the income they’ve generated, they suddenly have control over their lives and focus that new economic power on their children, their education, their health, and priorities that will ensure a more promising future. That’s when men’s attitudes have changed too.
TR: In your book, Leap of Faith, you mention one husband seeing his wife prosper, and responding by saying he wants an additional one.
Queen Noor: I know. Thank God we don’t come across that too much. In one of our programs in the Bedouin community, we started working with Save the Children, and we integrated health, education, and income generation for the women using traditional weaving. The craft was dying out, and we helped a new generation understand that this could become a livelihood for them. I had seen people try to impose Western ideas on other cultures, and I was determined not to do that. We have within our culture a protective safety net. In Jordan, we have lower rates of crime and delinquency because we have an intact family network. That is a great asset, and the women are central to that. So in trying to provide opportunities for women, it was very important to ensure that the women could work in a way that would not disrupt their family responsibilities.
TR: Does altruism run in families? Is there an altruism gene?
Queen Noor: That’s a good question. There’s so much yet to understand about genetics, there could well be. Is compassion a fundamental human trait? There are those who will say that children demonstrate compassion instinctively at certain stages. That’s what I believe, and I have seen compassion among those who have suffered the most, and compassion directed toward those who are associated with the source of the suffering. But the people who grow up in conflict situations have to work harder to overcome the very natural sense of injury, grievance, anger, and pain in order to empathize with others. All of our faiths emphasize compassion, emphasize empathy through the golden rule or the rule of reciprocity.
TR: You have a remarkable resilience. What do you keep in mind to forge ahead, and what do you say to those who are discouraged and considering giving up?
Queen Noor: First of all, getting discouraged is very human. Everybody has those moments. This may not be of help to anyone else, but I often think about my husband, who saw the best and the worst in people. He was subjected to many assassination attempts in his unrelenting efforts to achieve peace and to resolve different conflicts in our region. He faced so many obstacles that were unnecessary – human obstacles – and he never lost his faith in anyone. He never became cynical; he never stopped believing. He was a devout Muslim and a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad, and he took that very seriously – to try to live as true to the teachings of the faith that his family had played such a part in bringing to the world. And he never stopped believing in his ability to play a constructive role. When everything looks insurmountable to my children, I remind them of their father’s example, because he was such a force and inspiration for them. Then I throw myself into my work. When we are tempted to feel sorry for ourselves or feel that we are facing insurmountable barriers, there’s always something we
can do for someone else in need. There’s always some way we can serve, and there’s no more fulfilling path to happiness. There’s no more enriching path in life than service.
TR: There are people who say they want to spend more time serving others but believe they don’t have the time or resources for it. How can you convince them otherwise?
Queen Noor: It starts for everyone at home, in your personal interactions with your family, with your friends, with people you meet, with strangers on the street. It starts with cultivating a generosity of spirit, and it can start with a smile – just brightening someone’s day by giving of your heart to people you encounter, no matter how dire your circumstances. Even if you have no material resources to offer, you always have your heart and the light of your eyes, the light of your soul. For those of us who are fortunate enough to have access to all these new technological platforms, there’s a multitude of ways
for people to connect. Organizations such as Rotary develop connections within their communities or nations around a common cause. The possibilities are limitless now for individual and collective engagement. I think any human being
has the ability to have a profound impact on others, and through others, on the larger world.
TR: Which humanitarian issues do you think the media overlook the most?
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