Mita Hosali on Jan 7, 2021

Maha and I knew each other as colleagues and in my capacity as Gender Focal Point for the Department. She was tough and outspoken, but she had a very generous, kind and caring inner core. She was extremely intelligent and a maverick. She bucked trends and did not respect authority if you demanded it. She would say the most outrageous things and she could challenge folks who did not understand where she was coming from.

She was passionate about the UN and the people of the world we are working for, and most of her ideas were aimed at getting to that very difficult point of how are we serving the world’s people, the ones that really need the UN’s support.

She loved beautiful things. In the last year, her desk was often near my office and she would be full of excitement about some jewellery exhibition I mentioned to her, or even my struggles with learning Arabic. She went off and bought something for her mother and showed it to me. I met Cha Mansour many years ago and was so taken away by her beauty and dignified presence. I asked Maha how her mother was so polite and she was so mischievous!

I remember teasing her and she said she told her brother, Sherif, who laughed and laughed about the expression I used to describe an outfit she wore.

Maha was often misunderstood and could not be easily placated if she felt you were ridiculing her. She could be unstoppable if she felt she was being unjustly treated. She had a zest for life and was always putting up trial balloons. When last we spoke, she asked for feedback on a proposal and poked fun about how her English was getting better by the day.

Maha will live on as someone who was unique and brought diversity to the UN in an entirely different way. We wish her family lots of courage and happy memories.