Maha Khalil Chalabi, Lebanese UNESCO Good Will Ambassador

UNESCO Director-General, Irina Bokova, appointed Lebanese head of the International Committee for the Preservation of Tyre, Maha Khalil Chalabi, as its new good will ambassador, to be officially announced during a ceremony on February 17 at the Organization’s headquarters in Paris. In her introduction of Chalabi, Bokova said that the Tyre committee was founded back in May 1980 in Paris to support the implementation of several programs, notably ‘The International UNESCO Campaign for Tyre and its Environs’. The latter was launched in 1988 for the rehabilitation and socio-cultural development of the southern city. In 2008, the ‘Tyre Foundation’ was created for the purpose of launching an open museum and expo in the City known as ‘Europe, the Daughter of Tyre’. Another of her achievements Bokova mentioned was the establishment of ‘The League of the Canaanite, Phoenician and Punic Cities’ which covers a wide network of cities sharing the same history in order to activate the dialogue of civilizations and promote peace. In 1984, Chalabi published her thesis at the Sorbonne entitled ‘West/East Relationships Analyzed through Tyre Travelers during the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Centuries’. In 2008, her book ‘The Phoenician Art: New Expressions’ was released on which she invites readers to discover an art through the  history, culture, crafts, beliefs as well as the myths of its nations . (An Nahar, February 11, 2016)