Rana Husseini is an award-winning journalist and human rights activist who has dedicated her life tackling social issues, with a special emphasis on violence against women. From her home base in Jordan, Rana has been instrumental in bringing the issue of honour crimes against women to public attention and for securing changes to the law in Jordan to bring stronger penalties for crimes of these types. Rana is an author of "Murder in the Name of Honour".


As a Jordanian woman journalist writing for The Jordan Times, Husseini focused on social issues with a special emphasis on violence against women, as well as the brutal crimes that are committed against Jordanian women in the name of family honor.
Her coverage of and dedication to ending this unjustified practice against women helped raise national awareness on a topic that is traditionally considered taboo. The government responded by introducing legal and judicial changes that suggest tougher punishments for perpetrators of such crimes.

In 2009, Husseini finished writing her book on so-called honour crimes in the world, with special emphasis on Jordan. The book, in English, Arabic and Dutch, is entitled "Murder in the name of honour" and aims at providing people with a credible source based on real-life experience and tackling a sensitive issue which is often susceptible to misconception.

Rana Husseini has earned nine local and international awards, including a medal from HM King Abdullah II in 2007, for reporting on such crimes.

Husseini was interviewed by various local, Arab and international media such as CNN, ABC, BBC, NY Times, VOA, Al Jazeera, Al Arabia, MBC, and the Chicago Tribune. Based on these efforts she has been invited to lecture in several local and international conferences regarding the issue as well as women's rights in the region.

In addition to her extensive experience in the journalism field, Husseini has conducted several consultancies and advocacy for women' s rights in the Middle East and Jordan with local NGOs, UN agencies and international organizations. She has served as special advisor to UN Women (previously UNIFEM), Equality Now and Freedom House on women' s issues and press freedoms in Jordan.

Husseini also worked as a consultant and trainer for the Jordan Media Institute (JMI) and the International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX) by conducting training workshops for local reporters, journalism students on reporting on gender, human rights and violence against women. Husseini is also a project coordinator for a JMI media monitoring project, which focuses on monitoring the coverage of issues related to women's rights in major Jordanian daily newspapers.

For more information please visit her website: www.ranahusseini.com