Sumaya Farhat-Naser

Sumaya Farhat-Naser, born in 1948 in Birzeit near Ramallah, studied biology, geography and education at the University of Hamburg and earned a doctorate in applied botany. From 1982, she taught botany and ecology at Birzeit University in Palestine. Between 1997 and 2001, she headed the Palestinian Jerusalem Center for Women. Farhat-Naser helped found and worked with several organizations, including Women Waging Peace at Harvard University and the Global Fund for Women in San Francisco. Her awards included an honorary doctorate from the University of Münster in 1989, the Bruno Kreisky Prize for Human Rights in 1995, the Evangelical Book Prize and the Mount Zion Award in 1997, the Augsburg Peace Prize in 2000, and the Hermann Kesten Medal and Bremen Solidarity Prize in 2002.