Expertise: Stabilization, Peacebuilding, Humanitarian and Development Programs, Transitional Justice, Human Rights, Women’s Rights.  

Languages: Fluent Arabic and English, communication level in French and Russian. 

Bio: Amat Al-Aleem Al-Soswa (@AlsoswaAmat) is a Yemeni journalist and Yemen's first female Ambassador and Minister. At the beginning of her professional career, she worked as Deputy TV Programs Director at Sana’a TV, which was the most senior position a woman held in Yemeni television. From 1989 to 1991, Alsoswa led the Yemeni Women's Union before the Yemeni unification. She was the undersecretary of Yemen's Ministry of Information and Chairperson of the National Women's Committee. Alsoswa was the first woman Undersecretary in the Ministry of Information. In the early 2000s, she served as Yemen's ambassador to Sweden, Denmark, and the Netherlands. In the Netherlands, she was Yemen's Permanent Representative to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, and during her tenure, she was appointed to work in Yemen's Human Rights Ministry and oversaw the Minister initiated the country's second  Human Rights Report and established a public human rights resource center. 

Alsoswa was appointed in 2005 by United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan to be the Assistant Secretary-General, Assistant Administrator of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), and Director of its Regional Bureau for Arab States. In this post, she has led UNDP’s 18 program offices in the Arab world in their efforts to develop national capacities for poverty reduction, democratic governance, sustainable development, crisis prevention and recovery, and women’s empowerment. In 2014, Alsoswa was appointed to be the Executive Director of the Executive Bureau for the Acceleration of Aid Absorption and Implementation of the Mutual Accountability Framework.

Alsoswa holds a B.A. in Mass Communications from Cairo University (1980) and an M.A. in International Communications from the American University in Washington, DC. Alsoswa has published and lectured extensively and has received numerous awards. She is a Trustee of the Arab Democracy Foundation. She has written and spoken on women's rights and democracy. She has been an activist for Human Rights in general and freedom of expression in particular. Alsoswa asserts that in order for women to fight against discrimination in Arab countries, older traditions of interpretations of Islamic texts, which were once more favorable to women, must be revived. Alsoswa believes that recognizing women's contributions to the family and society as important and valuable is necessary for change and that girls need equal access to education.