Leila Shahid

Leila Shahid was born in Beirut, in 1949. She studied anthropology and sociology at the American University of Beirut, where she met Yasser Arafat. She worked in a Palestinian refugee camp after the Six-Day War, in 1967, until 1974, the year in which she began her doctorate in Anthropology in Paris. For several years, she was the director of the journal Revue d’étude palestiniennes, founded by Elias Sanbar. Her career as an ambassador started in 1989, when Arafat invited her to be a representative of the Palestine Liberation Organization in Ireland. She held this position in other countries, namely The Netherlands and France and, in 2006, she was invited to be the representative in the European Union, a position she held until 2014. Her life demonstrates an important commitment to diplomacy and the defence of peace in Palestine and the world.