Former Kelso High School student Dr Emma Leslie has been awarded a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List for her many years of conflict mediation and peace work in the Asia-Pacific region.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Dr Leslie, 44, was honoured for her “significant service to international relations through the facilitation of a network of conflict transformation and peace practitioners”.
Even as the award is made public today, Dr Leslie is flying to Norway to take part in the 2016 Oslo Forum where she is one of 100 prominent mediators of armed conflict from around the world invited to take part.
Fellow participants include United States secretary of state John Kerry, United Nations deputy secretary-general Jan Eliasson, and International Criminal Court prosecutor Fatou Bensouda.
Dr Leslie said she was overwhelmed to learn she was being awarded a Member of the Order of Australia.
“I still can’t believe it,” she said.
Although she has now made her home in Cambodia, Dr Leslie lived in Bathurst from the time she was three years old.
The daughter of Annette and Michael Leslie, she was also greatly influenced in her humanitarian work by her grandfather, Anglican Bishop Ken Leslie.
She went to live in Cambodia when she was 19.
She said her fascination with the country began in Years 9 and 10 when she studied Cambodian history with local educator Jan Gerard.
“I found it so devastating to think of Australia’s own part in their bloody history and what people there had survived,” Dr Leslie said.
“I was a bit obsessed for a long time with Cambodia.”
Dr Leslie has worked on conflict transformation and peace-building throughout Asia since 1993.
Since moving to Cambodia in 1997, Dr Leslie has worked with the International Campaign to Ban Landmines and the Working Group for Weapons Reduction in Cambodia.
She has served as a consultant for Conciliation Resources on Philippines Peace Processes, and has supported the peace talks between the government of the Philippines and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front as a member of the International Contact Group (ICG) since 2011.
Dr Leslie observed the Myanmar peace process as an independent observer, and also teaches at the Folke Bernadotte Academy in Sweden on UN Department of Political Affairs mediation courses.
She married Soth Plai Ngarm in 2001 and has three step-children, Lyda, Sarith and Nanita.
She was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005 and was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Education by Charles Sturt University in 2014.
She co-founded the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies (CPCS) with her husband in 2008.
