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Maryam Boukhar Hassan, the UN’s first global advocate for peace, urges action through poetry and youth-led digital campaigns
Summary
Maryam Boukhar Hassan, a Nigerian spoken-word artist and the United Nations' first global advocate for peace, recited a stanza of her poem and described how childhood experiences of violence, a viral video, and her True My Voice program inform her plans to use digital storytelling and partnerships to translate suffering into policy and action.
Maryam Boukhar Hassan, a Nigerian spoken-word artist known artistically as Alhan Islam and the United Nations' first global advocate for peace, told an audience at a United Nations General Assembly commemoration that she intends to translate lived experience of conflict into concrete action.
Hassan opened by reciting the first stanza of her poem, saying, “I used to think that peace was a place ... But I have come to understand that peace is not a line we cross. It is a choice that we make over and over again, especially when it is the hardest.” The lines framed a longer account of how her personal history shaped her advocacy.
Describing her upbringing in northern Nigeria, Hassan said she was exposed to interreligious violence from age 4 in Kaduna State and recalled attackers coming to her grandmother’s house. She credited a neighbor, whom she named as Baba…
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