Dr. Hajar Abu Jabal: “I hope that my presidency of the General Assembly for Tolerance and Peace will be an opportunity to project an honorable image of Arab women to the whole world.”

On Aug 1, 2021

A few days ago, the Global Council for Tolerance and Peace celebrated the first female president of the General Assembly for Tolerance and Peace, after the sixth session of the International Parliament for Tolerance and Peace was held in the Republic of Montenegro, and in the presence of 41 parliamentarians representing their countries, declaring to everyone that women have a role that no one can ignore in the development of society, and the upbringing of society. Promising generations based on human principles and values, which create societies that live in peace, love and acceptance of the other, regardless of his ideas and orientations.

On this occasion, we are pleased to accompany you, through the following lines, on a new tour between the corridors of the Council and a special dialogue with the first President of the General Assembly for Tolerance and Peace, Her Excellency Prof. Dr. Hajar Abu Jabal.

Who is the president of the General Assembly for Tolerance and Peace?

Prof. Hajar Ismail Abu Jabal holds a Bachelor’s degree in Medicine from Ain Shams University, graded excellent with honors.

After graduating, she was appointed as a teaching assistant at the Faculty of Medicine and moved up the career ladder until she reached the rank of professor.

She obtained a doctorate in immunology, then moved to the French capital, Paris, and did postgraduate studies in a delicate specialty, which is tissue immunology and kidney transplantation.

She headed the Central Laboratory for Analysis at Ain Shams Specialized Hospital.

She held the position of advisor to the former Egyptian Minister of Health, Dr. Awad Taj El-Din for Health Policy Affairs.

She took a three-year course from the United Nations Development Program (U.N.D.P.) in the field of Women’s Political Empowerment.

Not only that, but she is also a plastic artist whose love for art led her to study it academically. She did free studies at the Faculty of Fine Arts at Cairo University, and was tutored by the late great artist Hassan Soliman, and held several exhibitions locally and internationally.

At the outset, we congratulate Your Excellency the presidency of the General Assembly for Tolerance and Peace, and we would like to inform Dr. Hajar about her journey with the Global Council for Tolerance and Peace… How did it start?

Thank you very much. I remember the first day I met His Excellency Ahmed bin Mohamed AlJarwan, the President of the Global Council for Tolerance and Peace, at the end of 2017, and the Council was at that time a nascent and not yet completed a month of its establishment, at a dinner that included a number of high-ranking personalities, and His Excellency Ahmed AlJarwan on a short visit to Cairo at the time.

In the meantime; I and the attendees listened to an explanation about the nature of the council, its goals that it seeks to achieve and the visions it adopts, and my attention began to focus more and more, as if someone had pressed a start button inside me, and I sat and talked to myself with great happiness that there are those who have the same ideas and ambitions that I have always wished to achieve in the field of work. Societal, all my community activities were individual and not in an institutional framework.

After this meeting, I corresponded with His Excellency the President of the Council and expressed my desire to join him, His Excellency welcomed this, and communication continued between us until His Excellency offered to join the General Assembly for Tolerance and Peace after its first meeting in May 2020, and nothing new happened since then because of what the world has gone through following Corona pandemic, until I was offered the presidency of the General Assembly for Tolerance and Peace in February 2021.

Can we say that Dr. Hajar’s presidency of the General Assembly for Tolerance and Peace is an important milestone in the history of her community work? And why?

Of course, it is very important because it achieves what I hoped to implement in my life in an expanded and institutional framework. As a professor at the university, my activity and my interest in caring for students, the university community and patients, and trying to change their lives for the better, but all these activities were done on a purely personal basis and not affiliated with any institutional body or Civil society, and this helped me in my work at the time as an advisor to the former Minister of Health, Dr. Awad Taj El-Din for Health Policy Affairs.

When I joined a training course for political empowerment of women affiliated with the United Nations Development Program, which lasted for three years, I never forgot my service work and my duty towards society, and study and service work went in parallel, and the matter developed into several experiences in educating rural women and helping them improve their lives for the better. Therefore, when such an opportunity came, not only at the local level, but also at the international level, it was like a dream whose features began to materialize on the ground.

What is your Excellency’s vision or the plan that you seek to implement during your presidency of the General Assembly for Tolerance and Peace?

What I believe in and have always sought to achieve, its tools have become available in my hands, especially since individual work does not enable one to reach the desired results, and there has become an umbrella that contains those ambitions and goals, the most important of which is empowering women and activating their role within society, especially rural women and breadwinners, and homeless children. and those who have dropped out of education, work to advance them for the better, and create new opportunities in their lives that achieve the goals of sustainable development for them.

I hope that if we were able to implement the master’s program adopted by the Council, which is concerned with a study, the first of its kind in tolerance and peace, within Egyptian and Arab universities, and that human education would not be limited to a certain age stage, but rather we would develop awareness programs that address children in schools to inculcate in them the principles of tolerance and peace since Young people, in order to ensure that a generation grows up with a normal self, accepting all the differences that it may face in its life and can adapt to it, with regard to the local and Arab levels.

On the international level, I hope from God Almighty that my presidency of the General Assembly for Tolerance and Peace will be an opportunity to project an honorable image of Arab women before the whole world.

I also look forward to opening horizons of cooperation with civil society organizations internationally, strengthening relations with the representatives of the member states of the International Parliament for Tolerance and Peace, whom I had the honor of knowing in the Republic of Montenegro and cooperating with them, and access to work and cooperation mechanisms to activate educational and educational programs on tolerance and peace, and to examine the possibility of their application in Universities and schools, each in their own country, as well as exploring the possibility of supporting small and micro projects that achieve sustainable development for their people and change the lives of their members for the better.

A message you would send to the Council in particular, and another to all those interested in the values of tolerance and peace… What is its content?

My message to the Council: (I know that the noble task that you have taken upon yourself to carry out is very difficult, and that it requires strong determination and you possess it. All you have to do is trust and believe in your abilities and that you can achieve that noble goal, which is to spread the values of tolerance and peace throughout the world. And do not leave a door around you unless you are knocking on it, for no one knows what is behind a closed door except when he crosses it.

As for my message to those interested in tolerance and peace, I invite all of them to be one hand and one voice to be heard from the pulpit of the Global Council for Tolerance and Peace. The more efforts and visions are united, the more resonant the results will be.