VZCZCXRO1992
PP RUEHDT RUEHTRO
DE RUEHAM #1325/01 1211351
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
P 301351Z APR 08
FM AMEMBASSY AMMAN
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC PRIORITY 2452
INFO RUEHTRO/AMEMBASSY TRIPOLI 0028
RUEHDT/AMEMBASSY DILI 0005

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 AMMAN 001325 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SIPDIS 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: KPAO AMGT APER JO
SUBJECT: 2008 SWANEE HUNT AWARD NOMINATION 
 
REF:  STATE 20994 
 
¶1.  Per Reftel, post nominates Ms. Basma Amawi, senior Cultural 
Affairs Specialist at U.S. Embassy Amman. 
Citation: "For advancing the public role of Jordanian women and 
helping empower them in the judicial and political spheres.  Ms. 
Amawi undertook sustained, outstanding, and creative use of 
exchanges and other programs to build effective leadership among 
Jordanian women." 
 
¶2.  Justification:  Ms. Basma Amawi, the senior Cultural Affairs 
Specialist at U.S. Embassy Amman, has effectively countered the 
marginalization of women in her own society.  Through 
people-to-people exchanges and leadership training programs she has 
helped create networks for the legal protection of women, 
contributed to their economic empowerment, reached out to the 
Islamic community, and used innovative tools such as medical 
diplomacy.  Ms. Amawi's greatest strength is her perseverance.  She 
has applied it over the course of twenty years in identifying, 
cultivating, and nominating promising women for various projects. 
She has subsequently reached out to them, included them in Embassy 
events and encouraged them to apply for small grants to strengthen 
civil society.  The impact of her efforts, which has manifested 
itself especially in the past year, is enormous. 
 
¶3.  Using USG, as well as private, exchange programs to their 
fullest, Ms. Amawi has tapped into every available opportunity, such 
as the International Visitor Leadership Program, MEPI projects, and 
her own custom-made exchanges in collaboration with USAID.  In 
addition, she has arranged for U.S. speaker programs promoting 
women's rights throughout the country, including one that featured 
Ambassador Hunt a few years ago. The range of her contacts, from 
students to ministers, is phenomenal.  It is an asset she uses to 
nudge her society toward according women their full rights. 
 
¶4.  Equal Protection for Women under the Law 
 
Perhaps the most noteworthy focus of Ms. Amawi's efforts has been 
her support to human rights activists.  Early on she identified two 
young women who have become among the most influential people in 
Jordan.  Both went on International Visitor tours in 1995.  One of 
them, Asma Khader, is now Jordan's most respected legal scholar and 
an activist on women's rights.  She heads the Jordanian National 
Commission for Women.  The other, a journalist named Rana Husseini, 
exposed in print the previously hidden crime of honor killings. 
Even five years ago, the topic of honor crimes was such a taboo that 
a MEPI grant to Freedom House could not be seen as addressing this 
issue.  Ms. Amawi was involved in finding a way forward under the 
theme of domestic violence.  She helped to put Freedom House in 
touch with the Performing Arts Center, which launched interactive 
plays throughout Jordan that made people think about this issue. 
 
¶5.  MEPI was also able to make use of the extensive circle of 
contacts that Ms. Amawi had cultivated over the course of the years 
when they set up the Arab Women's Legal Network and the Arab Council 
for Judicial and Legal Studies.  Both institutions continue to 
facilitate the advancement of Arab women working in the legal 
profession. 
 
¶6.  Economic and Political Empowerment 
 
Ms. Amawi helped the MENA Businesswomen's Network, a partnership 
between local businesswomen's groups across the Middle East, the 
Beyster Institute, and the Middle East Partnership Initiative.  She 
helped to arrange the launch of the Network at the Ambassador's 
residence when fifty accomplished women business leaders from the 
United States joined fifty business owners from the Middle East. 
She played an important role in the visit of five leading Jordanian 
businesswomen to the U.S. to take part in the Arab Business Summit 
in Washington D.C. 
 
¶7.  Ms. Amawi changed the lives of two female Jordanian politicians: 
 In 1997 she spotted Nawal Faouri, a woman active in the Islamic 
Action Front, the party with roots in the Muslim Brotherhood, and 
nominated her for an International Visitor project.  The party tried 
to prevent Ms. Faouri from participating in a U.S. Government 
program but she went anyway, quit the IAF, and founded the Islamic 
Centrist Party.  Through the years, Ms. Amawi put forward the name 
of Ms. Faouri for various other programs.  Today, Ms. Faouri is one 
of six women in the Jordanian Senate. 
 
¶8. Rana Hajaia was a young activist who headed the Pioneer Women's 
Network in the provincial district of Tafileh in southern Jordan 
when Ms. Amawi proposed her for an International Visitor project on 
state and local government.  Based on the ideas she developed on 
this trip, Ms. Hajaia wrote a grant request to the MEPI-funded 
office of the International Republican Institute to improve 
municipal governance.  This helped Ms. Hajaia prove her leadership 
qualities which led last year to her becoming the first female 
elected mayor in Jordan, in the town of Hasa.  Currently, the 
Millenium Challenge Corporation is working with this mayor on local 
governance issues, a superb outcome due to Ms. Amawi's insight and 
 
AMMAN 00001325  002 OF 002 
 
 
diligence in choosing Ms. Hajaia for an IV many years ago. 
 
¶9.  Medical Diplomacy and Outreach to Islamic Women 
 
Ms. Amawi has been an enthusiastic supporter of medical diplomacy. 
She quickly thought of ways to help the Middle East Partnership for 
breast cancer awareness and research, helping to enrich this 
initiative of the Middle East Partnership Initiative by designing a 
program that complemented the work of the partner institutions. 
This was a single-country international visitor project to enhance 
the capacity of the fledgling Jordanian cancer support group 
"Sanad."  Due to the excellent feedback we received, Washington 
decided to turn this program last year into a regional project. 
This year it is not just offered to our region but to two other 
regions as well.  Ms. Amawi has always known how to squeeze the most 
out of each exchange dollar. 
 
¶10.  An example of Basma's pro-active approach was her reaching out 
to the young women who pursue Islamic studies at the University of 
Jordan.  For several years the Embassy has deepened its engagement 
with the religious community, inviting many of them on exchange 
programs.  It is Ms. Amawi who has initiated most of these contacts. 
 Not surprisingly the students and scholars of Islam who had 
previously been nominated for these exchange programs had always 
been men.  This year, Ms. Amawi hammered out an arrangement with the 
Dean of the Islamic studies department to send an all-female group 
to the United States.  The university will send a female faculty 
member along on this trip.  Such a development is entirely 
unprecedented at that Department, but Basma's insistence and 
perseverance brought it about.  Soon, female scholars of Islamic 
studies will join the hundreds of others who have widened their 
horizons, narrowed their prejudices, and almost always moderated 
their views. 
 
The results of Ms. Amawi's hard work and dedication are real, 
something we saw evidence of in 2007.  While the kingdom has not 
witnessed a complete transformation in its treatment of women, 
things are changing:  Last year saw the first woman, Falak 
Al-Jamani, elected rather than appointed to parliament.  The 
candidate had been an International Visitor nominated by Ms. Amawi 
in 1997.  This is just one more example of Ms. Amawi's foresight. 
 
For these and many other accomplishments aimed at attaining equal 
status for women in Jordan, we believe Ms. Amawi is deserving of 
recognition. 
 
HALE