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Angela Jurdak Khoury: the first Lebanese Female Diplomat
Abstract
Angela Jurdak Khoury (1915-2011) is a woman of many firsts: she was the first Lebanese female diplomat as well as the first Arab female diplomat. But Khoury is important for more than just charting a new path for Lebanese women; she had a foundational role in the Lebanese diplomatic mission to the United States and to the United Nations. A detailed analysis of Khoury’s life story demonstrates her contributions to shaping the Lebanese state’s foreign policy, particularly in the formative years of the republic. Such a project is necessary because women are largely absent from standard texts on Lebanese history. A more detailed investigation into Khoury’s life story reveals the crucial role she played in the cultivation and the consolidation of the relations between Lebanon and the United States. Furthermore, her pivotal role in developing the United Nation’s Commission on the Status of Women in 1946, through which she advocated for women’s rights on the international level, becomes clearer. After receiving her Masters in Sociology from AUB in 1938, Khoury became its first female faculty member that same year. During World War II, she worked as the Assistant Director of the Allied Powers Radio Poll for Lebanon, Syria, and Palestine to register the number of people who listened to broadcasts by the Axis nations. Soon afterwards, Khoury became the first secretary of the consulate of Lebanon in Washington, D.C., a position she held from 1945 to 1966. She was the only female member of the Lebanese delegation to the United Nations Organization in 1945, alongside Charles Malek and Sobhi Mahmassani. The Lebanese government awarded her the Order of the Cedars in 1959 in honor of her service to the country. After resigning from the Lebanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs following twenty-one years of service, she pursued her Ph.D. in International Relations from American University in Washington, D.C. This paper fills some gaps in the existing narrative on Khoury and Lebanese women by utilizing her personal archives and conducting oral histories with her children and nephews to create a more complete biography of a woman who broke new ground for Lebanese women to be employed in the diplomatic corps and shaped the trajectory of Lebanon’s national affairs.
Discipline
History
Geographic Area
Lebanon
Sub Area
19th-21st Centuries