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Rabat – Karima Rhanem, a Moroccan civil society activist, has been named winner of the 2017 Pan-African Humanitarian Award.
The activist is the first Moroccan young woman to be nominated for this prestigious award, in the category of “Young Achievers Award on Social Leadership and Nation Building.”
Rhanem is an international development and communication expert with a specialty in governance and public policy advocacy with over 15 years of experience working with and managing civil society and youth programs with multidisciplinary organizations.
The Moroccan activist was chosen by the summit’s Advisory Board for her efforts to develop and promote the attainment of peace, integrity, democracy, and good governance.
Rhanem will receive the prize at the third edition of the Pan African Humanitarian Summit scheduled to take place on November 18 and 19 in Tanzania. The two-day event will be held under the theme “Peace is Possible.”
The activist will also take part in the summit as a panelist. She will discuss the prevention of violent extremism among youth through education.
The two-days event will gather together 200 international participants from 37 African countries. Attendees from different sectors, including business and industry, will discuss highlight “barriers to peace in Africa and provide a holistic and multidimensional approach to sustainable peace and development in the continent,” according to the organizers.
Rhanem told Morocco World News that she feels honored to be the first young Moroccan woman to be selected for this prestigious award in its third edition. “I am more happier that as the event will coincide with Morocco’s independence day (November 18).”
“I feel prouder as a Moroccan and African who was able to contribute to the human development and progress of my country in addition to my initiatives through a wider youth platform across Africa.”
The activist said that this achievement will push her to work even harder as she believes that “Africa has a great human capital potential that should be a subject of investment.”
“The talented young leaders of today will decide the fate of the African continent in the future,” she added.
Rhanem said that she will be working on the upcoming months on “inspiring young African leaders to drive change through innovative solutions to some of the pressing issues impacting youth inclusion and participation in decision making processes.”
“More importantly, I will be leading citizen diplomacy capacity building projects to empower young leaders to be better ambassadors of their own respective countries while learning soft skills in multi-track regional and global diplomacy and negotiations.”
She explained that this will lead the youth leaders to be better advocates for their own issues and eventually help peacefully influence policies that impact their development, quality of life, and livelihood.
