Ruba Saqr

The writer has reported on the environment, worked in the public sector as a communications officer, and served as managing editor of a business magazine, spokesperson for a humanitarian INGO, and as head of a PR agency.

Muslims, too, revere Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary

News broke out last week that two individuals were arrested for filming an offensive video near the Virgin Mary Circle in Fuheis. This has been most disturbing to Jordanians, Christians and Muslims alike.

The message to the public sector is clear: shape up or ship out

Last Wednesday, His Majesty King Abdullah sent a strong message to Jordanian ministers, top officials, and even small-time public sector employees to, essentially, shape up or ship out.

Water supply interruptions are unfair to Jordanian households

Next week, hundreds of thousands of households in Amman, Zarqa, and Balqa will experience their second water supply interruption in just two weeks. Jordanian households in many areas will have no option but to postpone water-dependent household chores (such as doing the laundry) for four weeks straight, to avoid emptying their water tanks.

Push for World Bank reform at COP27 is music to Jordanians’ ears

COP27 has not been easy for World Bank president David Malpass, whose views on climate change have been blamed for the bank’s failure to finance meaningful climate action in developing countries, like Jordan.

COP27 and ‘sustainability’ that is unsustainable

Sixteen years after Al Gore’s historic documentary “An inconvenient truth”, UN Secretary General António Guterres told world leaders at the opening of the COP27 in Egypt on Monday: “We are on a highway to climate hell with our foot on the accelerator.”

Do women make a difference in government and Parliament?

Now that Jordan has five women ministers in the Cabinet and 10 women lawmakers in the Senate (in addition to 16 women MPs in the Lower House), should the Kingdom’s female population expect social justice for all women — including working mothers and homemakers — at the grassroots level?

Jordan puts family-run farms at the heart of agricultural transformation

Last Thursday, His Majesty King Abdullah launched a new initiative to allocate 9,000 dunams (9 square kilometers) of agriculturally promising land to families residing in the Badia region, a step that puts Jordan on a new track of agricultural transformation based on a people-centric approach.

With low public trust, could the government be on its way out?

Jordanian journalists and media analysts have been speculating that the government of Bisher Al-Khasawneh may be on its way out on the heels of a new poll that shows a steep decline in public trust in the current administration: from 52 percent in October 2020 to 33 percent this month.

Jordanian women back to square one under new Child Rights Law

The Child Rights Law for the year 2022 sets back women’s rights in Jordan to a new low, erasing decades of mothers’ involvement in their children’s education, a role that is supposedly both traditional and non-threatening to the country’s conservative factions.

Lapid understands that the two-state solution is imminent

Last Thursday at the UN General Assembly in New York, Israel’s interim Prime Minister Yair Lapid sent shockwaves throughout Israel and the world after backing a two-state solution west of the Jordan River, ending years of stalemate on the Palestinian right to self-determination.