Quick Facts
Biography
Reem Alsalem (born 1976) is a Jordanian international human rights advocate. Since August 2021 she has served as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls.
Biography
Alsalem was born in Cairo, Egypt in 1976. She was educated at The American University in Cairo where she completed a master's degree in International Relations in 2001. She subsequently graduated from the University of Oxford in 2003 with a Masters in Human Rights Law.
She was employed for 17 years as an international civil servant by the UNHCR where she worked with refugees in 13 countries. She left in 2016 to work as an independent consultant on humanitarian and gender issues. She speaks Arabic, English, French, German and Spanish.
Alsalem was appointed United Nations Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls and took up the role in August 2021.