International Women's Projects

The International Steering Committee on the Economic Advancement of Rural Women (ISC):

Queen Noor is a member and former President of the ISC, which is an advocacy group comprising 15 wives of heads of states and governments representing the world’s five regions, who promote the implementation of the Geneva Declaration for Rural Women through the mobilization of political will and public opinion and the formulation and implementation of national policies for rural women around the world.

First ladies and special envoys from the Middle East, Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas took part in the 1996 Meeting of the International Steering Committee on the Economic Advancement of Rural Women (ISC), hosted by the ISC President Her Majesty Queen Noor and the Noor Al Hussein Foundation (NHF), in Amman from 14-16 May 1996.

The ISC has supported the establishment of innovative pilot projects that seek, within their local areas of impact, to reduce poverty and raise living standards primarily by building on the knowledge and productivity of rural women. The projects have ranged from a new Rural Women’s Network in Saint Lucia and the establishment of a first women’s bank in Pakistan to rural micro enterprises and poverty-eradication programs in East Asia as well as integrated production and training projects for women within a broader development model that also fosters legal changes and political participation in Jordan and other Arab countries.

The 1996 ISC Meeting in Amman included a trip to NHF’s Wadi Seer Community Development Project at Iraq Al Amir, which was initiated in 1994 to invigorate comprehensive socio-economic progress in the five villages of the area and to generate long-term employment particularly for poor women.

Queen Noor represented the ISC at the World Food Summit in Rome, November 1996, where she focused on rural women’s critical role in sustainable food security and the need to ensure their equal rights to basic social services and economic resources as well as their full integration in political, economic and social development spheres.

Pope John Paul II greets HM Queen Noor at the opening of the World Food Summit in Rome

The Women of Srebrenica Project:

The "Women of Srebrenica Project," whose steering committee is co-chaired by Queen Noor, U.S. Ambassador to Austria Swanee Hunt and Italian European Commissioner Emma Bonino, is an on-going initiative to focus public awareness on the needs of the survivors and to provide concrete help to the refugees of the former U.N. designated "safe-haven."

Queen Noor with U.S. Ambassador to Austria Swanee Hunt (left) and Italian European Commissioner Emma Bonino (right), standing in front of Jordan's medical shipment of aid to the women of Srebrenica.

In July 1996, the Queen joined thousands of refugee women in Tuzla to commemorate the fall of Srebrenica, bringing economic development aid and international donations from countries throughout the world.

Queen Noor speaking at a press conference held at this commemorative event, which was organized by Bosnian women refugees now living in Tuzla. The latter had invited Serb and Croat women to be with them, saying simply "we are all mothers." They created a giant banner embroidered with the names of their missing boys and men as a symbol of their unity in grief.

Hundreds of thousands of dollars were raised to fund economic development projects for the women of Srebrenica to enable them to start rebuilding their shattered lives.

There are 30.000 survivors of the Srebrenica massacre living in the area of Tuzla under in temporary ill-equipped refugee camps. They are

mothers, sisters, daughters and wives who are desperate to know the fate of their missing men and to have those responsible brought to justice. They are women on whom their community’s entire fate depends and who simply want to go home.