Nancy seeks to make a difference

James Reinl, United Nations Correspondent

• Last Updated: November 15. 2009 12:14AM UAE / November 14. 2009 8:14PM GMT

The Lebanese pop star Nancy Ajram at a Unicef press conference in Beirut last month. Joseph Barrak / AFP

NEW YORK // It is difficult to imagine Nancy Ajram, the Lebanese pop sensation typically seen in heavy make-up, revealing outfits and coiffed hair, donning combat fatigues and helping the dispossessed in a crowded refugee camp.

But following the 26-year-old’s appointment as a goodwill ambassador for Unicef, the UN’s agency for children, this is exactly what her millions of fans across the Arab world can expect to see over the coming months.

Ajram, the multi-award-winning performer, describes her new post as the “highest level” she could attain. “Being a celebrity is not enough when you cannot use it really to do something good in life.

“I want to go where the misery is really there. If I’m needed in the camps, I will go to the camps,” she said in a telephone interview.

“You have misery everywhere. If you go through Arab countries on a map – all of them are places to go. I think Iraq has to be my first aim as an Arab country because of the number of children that are killed there every day.”

The singer joins Mahmoud Kabil, an Egyptian actor, as a regional Unicef ambassador and other Arab humanitarians connected to the world body, including Jordan’s Queen Rania and Princess Haya Bint Al Hussein of the UAE.

While she can count on massive popular support, Ajram insists she is the “right person for the job” and ready to rank alongside such luminaries thanks to first-hand knowledge of the insecurity endured by Arab children.

She also traces a relationship with the UN children’s agency that stretches back to when, at the age of eight, she won first prize in a Unicef-sponsored LBC television show during her public debut.

Born in Beirut in the middle of Lebanon’s protracted 16-year civil war, Ajram says musical success did not spare her from the violent realities of a region in which conflicts are “coming up like mushrooms”.

“We were living under bomb shells, scared. Fear was our daily bread,” she said. “When you have war, the new generation are more disturbed than adults.

“Many of the kids, not only in Lebanon but other countries where there is war, they have fear. They become unstable. They don’t study and you have an illiterate generation going into drugs.”

From Israel’s winter invasion of Gaza to the current violence between al Houthi rebels and government forces in Yemen, Ajram says that Arab children too often bear the brunt of political conflicts.

Best known as the bubbly, blue-eyed brunette singing Coca-Cola jingles, Ajram says marriage and giving birth to her first child, Mila, in May, have afforded her a more serious perspective on children’s issues.

Although the US television host Oprah Winfrey recently described her as the “Arab Spears”, the demure Ajram is quick to point out that there are few similarities between herself and the troubled American star.

“She wanted to make a comparison of the stardom of both of us – but surely my private life has nothing to do with Britney’s life. They’re different,” she said.

The winner of last year’s World Music Award for best-selling Middle Eastern artist praises Unicef’s work in the region, where the agency has been refitting 140 Syrian schools with European Union cash.

Meanwhile, Unicef counsellors are helping young Palestinians deal with the stress from Israeli searches and checkpoints. Others struggle to secure an increase on the 13 per cent of Yemeni girls currently attending secondary school.

This week, Unicef released a report on malnutrition that ranked Egypt, Yemen, Sudan and Afghanistan as having among the highest prevalence of children suffering from stunted growth in the world.

Unicef’s executive director, Ann Veneman, said Ajram and other envoys with “high visibility in the media” can use celebrity status to raise awareness about improving children’s diets and other key issues.

“The goodwill ambassadors have been very effective spokespersons for everything from child health to child nutrition and advocates for education, as Queen Rania has put her focus on,” Ms Veneman said. “She has been a strong advocate in the region as well as around the world.”

Ajram is currently in the studio working on a Unicef song and promises to “raise my voice very high” on humanitarian issues, while carefully switching off the microphone when it comes to more divisive issues.

“I never get into politics. The best thing for a singer or an artist, especially in a complex place like the Arab world, is to be really neutral and not taking positions,” she said.

“The only change I can make is by being myself, being Nancy, and helping the kids.”

jreinl@thenational.ae