Joumanah El Matrah

Joumanah El Matrah is the CEO of the Australian Muslim Women’s Centre for Human Rights (AMWCHR) and a PhD student at Swinburne University – her Doctorate is on counter terrorism and its impact on Muslim communities. Joumanah has published a number of works on Muslim women in Australia. Trained as a psychologist, Ms El Matrah is a community development worker and has been active in the community welfare sector for 20 years.

She has been a member on many government and community boards, including the Victorian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, Australian Multicultural Advisory Council, the Victorian Women’s Trust and Family and Sexual Violence Case Management Centre, Lae, Papua New Guinea. She is currently a Board Member of the Council for Arab Australian Relations, Department of Foreign Affairs and a member of the Annual National Roundtable on Human Trafficking and Slavery Government Federal Attorney General’s Department.

Ms El Matrah has raised the profile of the AMWCHR at the national and international level. She was an invited participant to the Ninth Annual Global Women’s Leadership Institute; Realising the Vision of Women’s Human Rights: Understanding the Intersections of Racism, Sexism and Other Oppressions. Joumanah is also a Churchill Fellow, she researched the impact of the human rights movement on Muslim women internationally.