DUBAI, UAE: The United Arab Emirates on Wednesday named women to the newly created posts of state ministers for happiness and tolerance, and a 22-year-old female for youth affairs.
Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al-Maktoum named eight women as he revealed his latest cabinet line-up of 29 ministers in a series of tweets.
Ohoud Al-Roumi, who had served as director of the council of ministers’ office, was appointed “minister of state for happiness.”
“Happiness is not just a wish in our country. There will be plans, projects, programs and indices. It will be part of the job of all ministries,” tweeted Sheikh Mohammed, who is also the ruler of Dubai.
Shamma Al-Mazroui, 22, was appoined state minister for youth, while Lubna Al-Qassimi, a veteran minister of international cooperation and development, was handed the new post of state minister for tolerance.
The cabinet has eight new ministers, including five new women, with an average age of 38, WAM state news agency said.
An oil-rich federation of seven Gulf sheikhdoms, the United Arab Emirates is considered a safe haven spared in the wave of Arab Spring uprisings that hit the region.
Last year its rulers sought to widen the country’s nascent democratic credentials with about a quarter of its one million citizens given the right to vote.
Eighty-seven of the 330 candidates were women, who play a larger role in public life in the UAE.
But the authorities have been deeply cautious and in 2014 introduced sweeping new counterterrorism legislation that rights groups have criticized as paving the way for a crackdown on dissent of all sorts.
Citizens make up a small minority of the UAE’s population of nine million which is overwhelmingly made up of foreign workers.
UAE names women ministers for happiness, tolerance
UAE names women ministers for happiness, tolerance
Fledgling radio station aims to be ‘voice of the people’ in Gaza
- The electricity crisis is one of the most serious and difficult problems in the Gaza Strip, says Shereen Khalifa Broadcaster
DEIR EL-BALAH: From a small studio in the central city of Deir El-Balah, Sylvia Hassan’s voice echoes across the Gaza Strip, broadcast on one of the Palestinian territory’s first radio stations to hit the airwaves after two years of war.
Hassan, a radio host on fledgling station “Here Gaza,” delivers her broadcast from a well-lit room, as members of the technical team check levels and mix backing tracks on a sound deck. “This radio station was a dream we worked to achieve for many long months and sometimes without sleep,” Hassan said.
“It was a challenge for us, and a story of resilience.”
Hassan said the station would focus on social issues and the humanitarian situation in Gaza, which remains grave in the territory despite a US-brokered ceasefire between Israel and Hamas since October.
“The radio station’s goal is to be the voice of the people in the Gaza Strip and to express their problems and suffering, especially after the war,” said Shereen Khalifa, part of the broadcasting team.
“There are many issues that people need to voice.” Most of Gaza’s population of more than 2 million people were displaced at least once during the gruelling war.
Many still live in tents with little or no sanitation.
The war also decimated Gaza’s telecommunications and electricity infrastructure, compounding the challenges in reviving the territory’s local media landscape. “The electricity problem is one of the most serious and difficult problems in the Gaza Strip,” said Khalifa.
“We have solar power, but sometimes it doesn’t work well, so we have to rely on an external generator,” she added.
The station’s launch is funded by the EU and overseen by Filastiniyat, an organization that supports Palestinian women journalists, and the media center at the An-Najah National University in Nablus, in the occupied West Bank.
The station plans to broadcast for two hours per day from Gaza and for longer from Nablus. It is available on FM and online.
Khalifa said that stable internet access had been one of the biggest obstacles in setting up the station, but that it was now broadcasting uninterrupted audio.
The Gaza Strip, a tiny territory surrounded by Israel, Egypt, and the Mediterranean Sea, has been under Israeli blockade even before the attack on Oct. 7, 2023, which sparked the war. Despite the ceasefire, Israel continues to strictly control the entry of all goods and people to the territory.
“Under the siege, it is natural that modern equipment necessary for radio broadcasting cannot enter, so we have made the most of what is available,” she said.
