Director of Interfaith Peacebuilding
Hind Kabawat has directed CRDC’s Syria work since 2004 and has trained hundreds of Syrians in multi-faith collaboration and civil society development. Since the beginning of the Syrian revolution, she has piloted numerous training programs related to conflict resolution, women’s empowerment, and negotiation skills in Aleppo, Idlib, the Atmeh IDP camp, Istanbul, and Amman. She is also an instructor for CRDC’s graduate seminar, Approaches to Conflict Management and Resolution: Field Work with Syrian Refugees.
Hind is the founder and director of the Syrian Centre for Dialogue, Peace, and Reconciliation in Toronto and has served as a consultant and advisory board member at the World Bank. She is also head of the interfaith committee for Tastakel, an organization that includes women from diverse groups working for peace and reconciliation through women’s empowerment and education. In this position, Hind directs a literacy center for Syrian refugee girls in southern Turkey.
She is presently a member of the High Negotiations Committee at the Syrian peace talks in Geneva and is a founder of the Women’s Consulting Group for the HNC.
Hind holds an MA in Law and Diplomacy from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, in addition to a law degree from the Arab University in Beirut and a BA in Economics from Damascus University. She has also obtained certificates in conflict resolution and strategy leadership from the University of Toronto and a certificate in negotiation from Harvard University.
Hind has led a variety of public diplomacy efforts in recent years in Syria to promote interfaith tolerance and cooperation, modernization, and reform, as well as educational innovations in conflict resolution and diplomacy education.
In 2007, Hind was awarded the Peacemakers in Action Award from the Tanenbaum Center for Interreligious Understanding in New York and the Public Diplomacy Award from CRDC in 2009. She was a member of the Future of the Middle East Committee at the World Economic Forum in Davos and a member of the WEF’s Global Agenda Council for war intervention in 2011 and 2012. Hind is on the board of the Syrian Economic Forum.
From 1995 – 2014, Hind worked at law firms in Toronto as an international counsel. She was the Senior Program Officer for Syria at the United States Institute of Peace until May 2015.
Hind’s blog – www.hindkabawat.com
Email: hindkabawat@gmail.com