Rania championed education in an interview with Harper's Bazaar Arabia. She spoke about the demands on her role as queen, wife and mother. The queen also addressed issues with social media platforms. Below is an excerpt from the Harper's Bazaar Arabia interview.
At its most base level, social media can be an easy tool for bullying, and as an outspoken woman in the Arab world, Queen Rania is wide open to negativity and criticism, which she handles with grace and insight. “Listening to criticism is part of my job,” she smiles. “It’s important to respect all different viewpoints, and sometimes it’s the people who disagree with you who are able to point out something you may have overlooked. But criticism is constructive only when it is based on fact. Sadly, in today’s media landscape, false information can become irrefutable fact in a matter of hours.” She admits that when she first stepped into the role of royalty she was reluctant to speak out or take risks for fear of opening herself up to scrutiny or attracting censure. “With time and experience, I’ve become more comfortable in my own skin. There is nothing more important than being authentic, saying and doing what we believe in, and owning our narrative. If we don’t, others will fill in the gaps on our behalf,” she says. “I’ve learnt that the path to progress is long, hard, and often thankless – if you let fear of criticism paralyse you, you’ll never make it out the door. The difficult choices – the ones we most fear – are often those that need to be made.That fear is there to let us know that they are worth it.”
One of the most politically candid first ladies in the Middle East – if not the world – Queen Rania muses, “I never really made a conscious decision to be outspoken, I feel it’s something that I have to do because any voice raised against injustice erodes the power of that injustice.” She urges us all to follow suit. “I think it’s the most important thing in the world to be authentic, to live according to your beliefs and to speak your truth. Particularly at this time because the public discourse is dominated by hatred and intolerance and anger and fear, and so we need to provide a counter-narrative to that, particularly for people in public positions.”
“A large percentage of our population are young and therefore with the right interventions, what we see as a challenge could become an opportunity for very quick change,” she says. The digital world also makes it easier to reach students, train teachers and modernise learning. In 2014 Queen Rania launched Edraak as an Arabic online educational platform for adult learners, who were starving for engaging digital content in their native language. Since then, Edraak has reached more than 2.2 million registered users. Last September, the platform was expanded to schoolchildren too, with the Edraak K-12 platform, which will offer e-curricula in all major subjects to Arab children everywhere. “We’ve already rolled out mathematics, and there is much more to come. The platform will eventually include thousands of Arabic instructional videos, quizzes, and practice exercises covering everything our children learn in schools, all available free of charge to anyone with an internet connection,” Her Majesty says. The aim is to provide all Arab school-aged children with free access to quality education by 2020, whether they are in urban centres, refugee camps or conflict zones. “It is a tremendous undertaking, but it is one that our region cannot afford to put off,” she says. “A child denied an education is not a tragedy for just that child – it sets us all back. So we owe it to them, and to ourselves, to give them a fighting chance.”
