Born: Unknown (circa 1970), Kuwait
Died: NA
Country most active: Kuwait
Also known as: Arabic: العنود الشارخ
Dr Alanoud Alsharekh is a Kuwaiti women’s rights activist and founding director of Abolish 153 (short for Abolish Article 153), a campaign calling to end honour killings in Kuwait. She has been awarded the French Ordre national du Mérite and was named one of the BBC 100 Women in 2019.
After earning her Bachelor’s degree in the UK, she returned to Kuwait pregnant with her daughter at the same time the country’s suffrage movement was starting. When women lost the fight for full political rights in 1999, she returned to SOAS University of London for her doctorate in comparative feminism and Middle Eastern studies. After completing her PhD, she worked with Uppasala University in Sweden, Whittier College in the US and Kuwait University as a visiting academic and senior consultant. In 2018 she was made a fellow at The Arab Gulf States Institute. She is also the head of department at the Arab Open University. Dr Alsharekh is an Associate Fellow at Chatham House in London, where she leads a program called “Empowering Kuwaiti Women in Politics”. She is also director of the Ibtkar Strategic Consultancy, where she works to support women’s rights in Kuwait and overseas, including the “Empowering Kuwaiti Women in Politics” program, which included a year of training for Kuwaiti women in political leadership.
Dr Alsharekh has also served as director of the “Friends who Care” campaign for young girls at risk in Kuwait’s social care system of Kuwait. She has worked as a gender consultant for both UN Women and the United Nations Development Programme, was appointed to the Kuwait National Security Bureau in 2008, and serves on the advisory board of the Global Diplomatic Forum.