•New

• Program, speech and oration (in Catalan and English)

Amal Hadweh, a member of the Beit Jala Municipal Council, has gained recognition of her work promoting dialogue and reconciliation between the Israeli and Palestinian communities in one of the world’s most violent territories, and to highlight how individual action can be a tool for social transformation. Hadweh has worked with Palestinian women, helping them to develop skills for achieving new levels of political and economic power while also providing them with tools to combat the domestic violence that they often suffer. 

Amal Hadweh’s professional work has focused on the provision of training in non-violent communication. She has worked in refugee camps on the West Bank, where she served as coordinator and has been the heart and soul of Palestinian-Israeli Women’s Dialogue, a project of the Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information (IPCRI, actually Israel-Palestine: Creative Regional Initiatives) in which Israeli and Palestinian women participate in activities aimed at promoting dialogue and achieving peace. The goal is to change confrontational attitudes and create a climate of dialogue using techniques such as win-win and conflict resolution —focusing only on the parties to the conflict— and by developing negotiation, conciliation and mediation skills.

For over 26 years, Hadweh worked at the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), where she held posts on the management team that worked on Millennium Development Goals related to women’s empowerment and gender equality and oversaw the daily management of the UNRWA’s facilities in Jerusalem and the West Bank. 

Since 2012 Amal Hadweh has been a member of the board of trustees of Bethlehem University. She also serves on the Beit Jala Municipal Council, where she leads the city’s strategic planning initiative to develop the economy, improve infrastructure, increase tourism, and empower women in this small city that is home to over 15,000 people. Hadweh holds a bachelor’s degree in English from Bethlehem University, a master’s degree in education and teaching methods from Al-Quds University, and a PhD in business administration, with a specialisation in human resource management, from American World University in the United States.

The award ceremony took place on 10 November in the assembly hall of the Vèrtex building (Plaça Eusebi Güell, 6, Barcelona) on the North Campus. It was followed live in tv.upc.edu. Lourdes Reig, the UPC’s vice-rector for International Relations, has given the oration on Amal Hadweh’s merits. The proposal  to confer an honorary doctoral degree on Hadweh, approved for he UPC’s Governing Council in an ordinary session held on 6 October, to has the support of the Barcelona Institute of International Studies and the Palestinian Community in Catalonia.