Rima Salah

Rima Salah is a Palestinian-Jordanian academic researcher, who holds a number of positions in international advocacy for conflict resolution and the rights of women and children. She is an assistant clinical professor at the Yale Child Study Center, and currently the chair of the Early Childhood Peace Consortium (ECPC).

She is also a member of the international advisory council of the Academic University College for Nonviolence and Human Rights in Beirut, Lebanon, the United Nations High-Level Panel on Peace Operations., and sits on the board of directors at Women for Women International, the Global Network for Women Peacebuilders, and Cure Violence Global.

Early life and education Salah is a national of Jordan and speaks Arabic, English, and French. She holds a Ph.D. in cultural anthropology from SUNY-Binghamton. She also holds master's degrees in education and sociology and cultural anthropology from SUNY-Fredonia, and an undergraduate degree in sociology and social work from Beirut College for Women-Lebanon (now known as the Lebanese American University).

Salah began her career as a teacher in the Jordanian Government Public School System in 1965. Upon leaving the teaching profession, Salah worked for the Catholic Relief Services in Jerusalem as a supervisor of social workers for the organization's Humanitarian Programs for Refugees and Displaced People from 1967 to 1975.

From 1972 to 1987, Salah lectured on topics including social work, sociology, psychology, and Arabic at various institutions and organizations, including the School of Social work at Dar al-Tifl al-Arabi in Jerusalem, the Swedish Organization of Individual Relief in Jerusalem, the State University of New York at Binghamton, and Binghamton Community College in Binghamton, New York.

International advocacy career

United Nations positions Salah joined UNICEF in 1987 as Head of Office in Baluchistan, Pakistan. After five years in Pakistan, Salah became the UNICEF Representative in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso from 1992 to 1995 and the UNICEF representative in Hanoi, Vietnam, from 1995 to 1999.

From 1999 to 2004 she was UNICEF's regional director for West and Central Africa. convened to review current and future United Nations peace operations and their role in the prevention and resolution of conflicts.

Early Childhood Peace Consortium In 2012, Salah co-founded the Early Childhood Peace Consortium (ECPC), a network of stakeholders across sectors who champion peace-building and violence prevention through an Early Childhood Development (ECD) agenda.

Salah, along with ECPC member James F. Leckman, and Yale University professor Catherine Panter-Brick, co-edited the book Pathways to peace: The transformative power of children and families, investigating "the way that children are raised as a critical factor that can inform a community's tendency toward peace versus conflict".

In October 2015, Salah was elected as the ECPC's inaugural chair.

Awards and honors In 2019, Salah received the Recognition and Gratitude in Advocating for Children's Rights Around the World Award from Juzoor for Health and Social Development, an NGO based in Ramallah, Palestine, and the Palestinian Health Policy Forum.

On September 23, 2021, Salah was awarded the 2021 Peacemaker Award from the Center for Peace and Conflict Resolution (CPCR) at the J. Reuben Clark Law School at Brigham Young University.