Nasser Fellow Alexa Silva, Working for Peace
Written by: Alexa Silva
Alexa Silva, the Costa Rican Nasser Fellow from Batch 3, is currently studying and working for Peace. Before traveling to Egypt to participate in the Nasser Fellowship in 2022, Alexa Silva graduated from the National University of Costa Rica with a Bachelor of International Relations. At 22 years old, this Nasser Fellow was recently accepted to the University for Peace in Costa Rica to study in the Master of “Gender and Peace-building”. The University for Peace (UPEACE) is an institution of higher education dedicated to the study of Peace. Created by UN General Assembly Resolution 35/55, the University for Peace has been training leaders for Peace for the past four decades. It is a unique global academic institution with over 2,000 Alumni hailing from more than 120 nations. This University has a variety of learning opportunities, including scholarships for people from different regions, such as Asia and Africa.
Alexa Silva was admitted to the Master’s and was given a full scholarship at the University for Peace, which would be very helpful for her professional goals. She has led projects for the protection of the human rights of groups as women, children, refugee and migrant people. She was also selected as one of the 20 Young Peace-builders of the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC), and she has had the opportunity to formulate and manage projects for the protection and empowerment of migrant and refugee women living in Costa Rica. In addition, Alexa Silva is the leader of the “She leads here, she leads now” campaign of the Embassy of Canada in Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and Honduras, which promotes the leadership and empowerment of young women in these countries, and she is an advisor for the Embassy in topics like women, peace, security and migrations.
Alexa believes that some of the multicultural experiences she has had, had have shaped her into the woman she is now. she remembers the Nasser Fellowship as her best international learning experience, sharing with people all over the world, as she is doing now at the UPEACE, where more than the 95% of the students come from abroad. After the life-changing experience at the Nasser Fellowship, she always remembers Egypt as her second home. Even though thousands of miles separate Costa Rica and Egypt, there are always things that make her feel close to her Egyptian friends, as, for example, her first professor for the very first course of her Master’s, a talented and kind Egyptian man who has taught about Peace and Conflict for many years.
Dr. Amr Abdalla is the Senior Advisor on Conflict Resolution at the Washington-based organization KARAMAH (Muslim Women Lawyers for Human Rights). He has worked for many institutions, such as the Institute for Peace and Security Studies (IPSS) of Addis Ababa University or the SALAM Institute for Peace and Justice in Washington. Dr. Amr Abdalla studied law in Egypt and worked as a prosecutor in the case of the assassination of President Sadat and numerous other terrorism cases. He considers the Nasser Fellowship as a very important programme to bring back the memory of the former president, Gamal Abdel Nasser, and he declares himself to be a proud “Nasser Generation”.
Alexa Silva is encouraging all Nasser Fellows to continue their leadership and commitment to making a world a better place, because we are all capable of great things no matter what field we specialize in.
