A quilted life: interview with Hannah Yilma
OUTPUT TYPE: Journal Article
PUBLICATION YEAR: 2012
TITLE AUTHOR(S): V.Reddy
KEYWORDS: ETHIOPIA, IDENTITY, YILMA, HANNAH
Print: HSRC Library: shelf number 7765
HANDLE: 20.500.11910/2938
URI: http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11910/2938
If you would like to obtain a copy of this Research Output, please contact Hanlie Baudin at researchoutputs@hsrc.ac.za.
Abstract
Born in Ethiopia, Hannah Yilma is a retired diplomat whose career included working with the United Nations (UN) in areas as diverse as communications and peacekeeping, a short stint as the owner of a boutique and as a businesswoman in Addis Ababa. She completed a Bachelor of Arts degree in Business Administration from the Haile Selassie I University in Ethiopia. She retired as the Director of the UN Information Centre (Pretoria) in 2005. Prior to this appointment, Hannah held the post of Associate Spokesman in the Office of the Spokesman for the Secretary-General (at that time, Kofi Annan). And prior to this posting, she served as a Political Affairs officer in the Situation Centre in the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations from 1995-1998. She participated in two field missions; the UN Protective Force (UNPROFOR) in the former Yugoslavia, from 1994 to 1995, and the UN Observer Mission to South Africa (UNOMSA), from 1992-1994, as Civil Affairs Officer and Peace Observer, respectively. Before joining the UN in 1991 as an Information Officer in the Department of Public Information, Hannah was employed in the private sector for 15 years. Currently living in Pretoria, she continues to be actively involved in various capacities in non-governmental work, as well as in the diplomatic corps in South Africa. She engages in conversation with Vasu Reddy about growing up in a prominent Ethiopian family, about her life in Ethiopia, London and New York. Hannah speaks candidly about what her parents and grandparents meant to her, including the meaning of life in relation to war, age, location, family, well-being, democracy and identity.-
Related Research Outputs:
- Shifting African identities
- Ethno-religious nationalism in Sudan: the enduring constraint on the policy of national identity
- Escaping Europe's clutches
- Identity? Theory, politics, history
- Book review: Marks, M. (2001) Young warriors: youth politics, identity and violence in South Africa. Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press. 171 p. ISBN 1868143708
- Overcoming the legacy of discrimination in South Africa: final report
- Common origins, common futures: reflections on identity and difference in education
- Genesis of self-identity as disother: life histories of people who stutter
- Education choices in Ethiopia: what determines whether poor households send their children to school?
- Future demand of middle level qualified human resources in Ethiopia
- Memory, diaspora and spiced bodies in motion: Berni Searle's art
- Globalization issues of identity and the implications for governance and democratization in the post-apartheid South Africa
- Child nutritional status in poor Ethiopian households: the role of gender, assets and location
- Educational choices in Ethiopia: what determines whether poor children go to school?
- Multicultural national identity and pride
- Identity and race relations
- Regional end-term evaluation report of the pilots of the school improvement program framework in Albania, Ethiopia, Malawi, Sudan and Zambia
- How black is black enough?: seeking norms for blackness and identity
- Book review: Distiller, N. & Steyn, M. (eds.) 2004. Under construction: 'race' and identity in South Africa today. Sandton: Heinemann, ISBN 0796214786, 213 p
- Whose teaching whom?: interrogating subjectives in the teaching of literature in post-apartheid South Africa